Horse Island by John Samson Book Guild Publishing, £15.99

Thirty or more years ago the wartime adventure novels of Alistair MacLean had a huge vogue. One of his best-sellers was called Bear Island.

The title of that murder-thriller set aboard a boat came to mind as I turned the pages of John Samson’s short novel, which is set on the Ayrshire coast, west of Glasgow, in the 1960s. Horse Island, I subsequently found out, is a real place, an RSPB bird sanctuary, a small low-lying island opposite Ardrossan.

High-flying student Davie Hyland is keen to lead a school expedition to the remoter caves of Horse Island, but is warned off because of the danger. Detective Inspector Wallace suspects that the youth knows the whereabouts of valuables lost in a wartime boating accident.

Wallace is intent on framing Davie for something, not because he is intent on increasing his career arrest rate, but for another reason entirely.

Wallace, a bent bully of a copper, is also convinced that Davie has stolen a collection of a dead Jewish businessman’s collection of gold coins and wants a big share of the proceeds by fair means or foul.

In places the book borders on caricaturing comedy, like something concocted by Gregor Fisher and Elaine C Smith for Naked Video. I am thinking particularly of the beach scene where Wallace and three hired cronies attempt to intimidate Davie.

One of his inept cronies has a crowbar, another a bicycle chain while the detective inspector has a Webly handgun. The fourth loiters on the fringe of the attack and is the first to bolt, running backwards up a sand dune, messing his trousers in fear.

The other three all end up with severe head injuries from Davie’s shilelegh, a walking stick-cum-club. In hospital, the reputedly fearsome DI Wallace proves he is no Braveheart namesake by exaggerating the number of his assailants, suggesting that they are members of a local gang.

“Monkey McLaughlin. Booked him a few weeks ago. Gang fight on a Saturday night at the Mercat Cross. Not that much of a fight actually. he cracked some guy ower the nut wi’ a beer bottle. Also, about a month ago, he broke into the bubble gum machine outside Roccicoli’s cafe.”

“At this his wife interrupted.

“A bubblegum machine? Her voice rose an octave with indignation. “My husband was almost killed by a hooligan who robs bubblegum machines. That’s a big promotion in his criminal career, wouldn’t you say, Sergeant?”

What other purpose but comedy could such a passage serve? More overtly, comic relief takes the form of McTear, a grotesque greengrocer given over to lascivious daydreams that others enjoy provoking for sport. One of the novel aspects of this story is Samson’s strong weakness for dialect words and bits of hebrew and ancient Greek. The former include expressions such as “poked the Pope’s eye” for sexual intercourse, “chiel”, meaning chap or bloke, “pijaw”, sanctimonious moralising, and “loonies” and “queanies”, lads and lasses.

It makes a refreshing change to read a story which doesn’t have a dysfunctional anti-hero as the main character. Davie, a winner of prizes for maths, is on his way to Edinburgh University to study computing. He likes walking a neighbour’s dog on the beach and eating rolls with sliced sausage.

Three-quarters of the way through this story, the reader has no clue about the darker under-current of Wallace’s obsession with Davie.

It gradually emerges that six years before he was implicated in the killing of Davie’s drunken father. He underestimates the extent to which his father’s death drives Davie. The boy himself is frightened by his deep-lying anger, the anger that turns him into a fearsome opponent in a physical fight.

The climax of Wallace’s war on Davie comes one stormy night on Horse Island. There is only one winner.