729

So, Catherine MacLeod and her underlings appeared on Dead Girl Walking, Jack Parlabane's last mishap. The topherectomy suggests that they lived in different universes, but nae chance. Matt Black already appeared in Flesh Wounds. He of One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night where he kicked ass with Tim 'Death's Dark' Vale and retired-police Hector MacGregor. When he was still an officer of law, Inspector McGregor was having a Quite Ugly One Morning where he had to deal a dead body, throat-cut and missing an index finger. Then-DC Jenny Dalziel caught Parlabane wandered around in blood-vomit-and-faeces infested crime scene. Later, Parlabane stumbled upon the dead's ex-wife. Sarah Slaughter and Parlabane already lived together in Country of the Blind when they tried to save Nicole Carrow from murder and Tam McInnes, Paul McInnes, Bob Hannah, and Cameron Scott (a.k.a Spammy) from murder charges set up by George Knight and his ilks. Tam McInnes became Parlabane's wake up call in Boiling a Frog when he served at Her Majesty's pleasure, for a B&E charge (surprise, surprise) he pulled after Sarah cheated on him. This turned out to be (again, surprise, surprise) a conspiracy involving high level Scottish politicos and PR guru Ian Beadie. Parlabane and Sarah worked things out, while all the responsible parties were in jail. They were not in jail enough to not put Parlabane and Vale through a team building from hell in Be My Enemy (Or Fuck This For a Game of Soldiers). The unforgettable dinner they had, though, brought Parlabane to become the Rector of Kelvin University during The Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks. We also found out that despite his best efforts to annoy people, Parlabane could always rely on helps from his old friends. Here, we re-acquainted with Nicole Carrow (briefly), Spammy, and Larry Freeman. Freeman was an LA police who had saved Parlabane in another life. He also took 1/3 part in making sure that the year 2000 was Not the End of the World. The other 2/3 belonged to senator-daughter-turned-pornstar Madelaine Witherson and photographer Steff Kennedy. Kennedy also took the photograph for the single cover Raymond Ash student band. Ash and Angelique de Xavia tried to stop an international terrorism stunt in A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away, the notorious terrorist turn out to be Ash' former flatmate Simon Darcourt. Darcourt disappeared without body found, only to re-appeared in Snowball in Hell where he, among other things, kidnapped Anglique's parents. The international terrorism network forced Angelique to consider several names including Marius Roth, whose boat was a floating prison for Ross Fleming and his dad when it was All Fun and Games until Somebody Loses an Eye. To yet again beat Darcourt, Angelique got help from Zal Innez, the imaginative bank robber who taught her The Sacred Art of Stealing. Innez also helped Angelique's boss Jock Shaw caught Bud Hannigan, the notorious Glesca 'gangster'. The scene of Glasgow gangsters became hazy at this point because there was Angelique and even Karen Gillespie of A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil at one time and Catherine McLeod, Jasmine Sharp, and Glen Fallan at the other. It already looked like a history went back three decades in Where the Bodies are Buried and When the Devil Drives, it laid out neatly (but unsettlingly) in Flesh Wounds. And who knows what Parlabane up to.

I guess this is how Angelique supposed to look like

PS: Only Pandaemonium and Bedlam, which both happen to be sci-fi, don't seem to occupy the same universe. Well, understandable because one actually involving inter-universe travel and the other took place in video game(s), so, I can live with that.