Irvine Welsh

Though Trainspottingand its movie adaptation put Irvine Welsh on the map for American readers, his interests actually run further than Scottish junkies. In fact, they extend to the Sunshine State, where the internationally famous author maintains a home. Now Welsh has taken a minor player from his earlier, Edinburgh-set cop story Filth, and transplanted the unhappily affianced, intermittently drug addicted detective Detective Inspector Ray Lennox to Florida. Crimeis a crime novel, a page-turner ideally suited for Hollywood. Simon Pegg could play Ray, a fish out of water in need of a drink, who’s been dragged on vacation by his wedding-magazine-besotted fiancée. Ray’s haunted by his last big case in Scotland, a child abduction and murder, and a little bit of cocaine—we’re on vacation, honey!—would surely help him forget. But one bump leads to another, and his coke binge leads to a new case involving an endangered 10-year-old girl, who causes Ray to confront why exactly he’s so obsessed with child-sex crimes. Hey, what’s Dakota Fanning’s little sister up to these days? Elliott Bay Book Co., 101 S. Main St., 624-6600, www.elliottbaybook.com. 8 p.m. BRIAN MILLER
Wed., Sept. 24, 8 p.m., 2008