Dead Men's Trousers

You're nothing but a work-in-progress until that day you fall out of this world into the land ay dead men's trousers.

Because I read most of the books in this series before I joined Goodreads, I want to start with: I thought that Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting was an absolutely brilliant book – full of heart and laughs and subversive social commentary, amped up with a transgressive frisson and artfully dense dialect – and that Skagboys was a powerfully heartbreaking prequel. On the other hand, I found the sequel Porno to be campy and shallow, and the recent continuing saga of The Blade Artist to have been a disappointing betrayal of Welsh's world: what reader wants Begbie to be a buttoned-down straight citizen? Now with Dead Men's Trousers, we reconnect with the rest of the gang as they approach fifty years old, and as they jet around the world commenting on the evils of neoliberalism, Welsh seems to have become disconnected from everything that was subtle and engaging and true about his own characters; sure, people should grow up (and I'm glad none of the lads are skagboy jakeys anymore), and it's good to revisit these storylines and see how details from a few books ago have played out, but this book adds nothing to the furtherance of truth; there's no art here.

I'm giddy with shock. My sweaty palm reaches into my pocket tae the comforting bottle of Ambien. This is not my auld mate and deadly nemesis, Francis James Begbie. The horrible possibility dawns on me: perhaps I've been living ma life in fear ay a man who no longer exists.

As the book begins, Renton (now a world-travelling manager of House Music DJs) runs into Begbie on a transatlantic flight, and as Begbie calmly introduces his old frenemy (after all, Renton ripped the old psychopath off and left him for dead) to his stunning American wife, Renton isn't sure if he can trust in his old friend's newfound serenity. But as they both now have homes in California, they begin to socialise and Renton attempts to pay Begbie back for old debts. In shifting POVs, we also catch up with Sick Boy (now the owner of a high-class escort agency) and Spud (still a loveable loser, but getting by the best he can), and as the four eventually all cross paths again for the first time in decades, Renton finds himself forced to pay off even more debts (which leads him to plead poverty despite a first class lifestyle and homes on two continents). Characters get drawn into some campy (but enjoyable) crime capers, there is plenty of sex, experimentation with new drugs, and giving the boots to the wideos that deserve it, but the whole enterprise lacks heart. Most disappointingly, the political commentary that was indirect but so effective in Trainspotting is now constant and in-your-face, with both Renton and Sick Boy having these incongruous thoughts:

• Fear is an emotion best not expressed. Once acknowledged, it spreads like a virus. It's ruined our politics: the controllers have been dripping it into us for decades, making us compliant, turning us against each other, while they rape the world.

• I fight through the blocked-off roads into Soho. The IRA or ISIS never created anything like as much chaos and demoralisation in London as the neo-liberal planet-rapists with their corporate vanity construction projects.

• Global commercialism has compelled the Scots tae pretend tae like Christmas, but we're genetically programmed tae rebel against it.

• They were nice lads and the fact that they're in soldier uniform is constant proof that a nation state isnae a kind of construct if you urnae rich.

But everyone other than Spud is comparatively rich – most especially the Miami-based Welsh himself – and they all spend their time in pursuit of the “more” that will finally fill their empty spaces. Other than for the tying up of some old loose ends, Dead Men's Trousers is a fairly pointless read. Even so, every now and then, Welsh throws in an old school passage that made me smile:

The stewardess, not the lovely Jenny I was chatting tae, but a low-rent, pleb-serving, varicose-veined battleaxe, bike-rode into decrepitude over decades by the few hetero pilots, without even a hint of a sparkler thrown into the mix, is right over, her crabbit pus rammed into my coupon.

I may have been disappointed, again, but if Welsh writes another in the series, I'll probably pick it up, again.