THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

Mara Menzies is a supreme storyteller on the stage and the page who draws upon her rich, dual Kenyan/Scottish cultural heritage to explore her life and the world around her through myth, legend and fantasy. We hope you enjoy this extract from her beautiful book, Blood and Gold.

 

Extract from Blood and Gold
By Mara Menzies
Published Birlinn Ltd

 

Rahami and a New World

It is commonly known that death is the most absolute thing in the world. Even though it may arrive at an altogether inconvenient time, it will most certainly arrive. Rahami, Jeda’s mother, had never considered the possibility that it would happen to her. She was a young, beautiful woman. Beautiful because she was sure of herself. She walked with grace and poise. She moved through the cobbled streets, glancing upwards at the exquisite stone buildings, their spires, domes and turrets disappearing into the haar, that thick, magnificent fog that rolled in from the sea and hung low over the city. Wherever she walked, people turned to marvel at this woman whose skin glistened like the midnight sky. They noticed the thickness of her lips, the sway of her hips, the casual confidence she exuded with a flick of her wrist or a slight tilt of her head. She smiled, for despite the differences she knew she loved this place as much as the distant land of her childhood.

Rahami loved words. As she peered through the ghostlike haze she mouthed haar. She had learnt it from a talkative stranger eager to share the wonders of his city. She liked the sound of it. It rolled off her tongue so easily. It was soft and gentle.

She thought of the old stories she had heard of this place. Women accused of witchcraft and sentenced to death. Fresh bodies stolen from their graves and sold for the advancement of science. Murder, torture, incredible wickedness! She imagined that in this magnificent city many of these stories had likely taken place under the cloak of the haar. It lent an air of mystery to everything it touched. Quite perfect for committing a crime.

When she had first arrived, she had tried to fit in, changing her clothes to mirror the grey and the dark. After a few years she realised that even though she was now of this place, she would likely never be seen as fully belonging, and so she decided there was absolutely no need to blend in at all. This city was hers regardless, and so she returned to wearing the bright clothes that spoke to no era or trend. She danced as the buskers played, her body remembering steps from a different world but which matched the rhythms so perfectly. She laughed loudly in places where silence was expected, spoke her mind regardless of who was present.

 

One day, as she meandered through the streets, she was struck by the striking red stone exterior of an ancient building close to the city centre. Realising it was a portrait gallery, she walked in, keen to learn more about the people so greatly admired for having contributed to this great city. A young man with scruffy brown hair was looking around and was drawn to her inquisitive spirit. There was a curiosity about him that appealed to her. He was nervous and made a terrible joke. She laughed. He smiled and told her of some of the faces he recognised in the paintings. She seemed genuinely interested. He asked if he might take her out. When she agreed, he planned the perfect date, a slow meal and a walk on the beach.

As the sun set, he found her fingers enveloping his. She smiled, and as he gazed into her sparkling eyes he thought that she was perhaps the most beautiful person in the world. They spoke, sharing stories of their lives, their thoughts, their dreams, their ambitions. They agreed to meet the following day, and then the next. They spent increasingly more time together, and Rahami began to notice how the blue of his eyes reminded her of an ocean she once knew, many thousands of miles away. Her eyes followed the curve of his jaw, and when she noticed the thinness of his lips, she began to wonder if those thin lips knew what lips were supposed to do.

Those lips must have spun a web of sweet words around her, as soon the two of them were inseparable. A few years later her skin tingled and trembled as those thin lips sealed their marriage with a kiss and it was not long after they were blessed with a beautiful daughter. They named her Jendayi, for though her birth had been long and arduous, she had arrived safely with a sweet smile. As her grandmother’s name had been Jendayi, which meant gratitude, it appeared to be a perfect fit.

A tiny girl with skin the colour of gold, the thick, full lips of her mother and the round wide eyes of her father. Jeda, for that is how she came to be known, was very much loved. She was a wanted child, and she knew it, for her parents did their best to fill her life with joy.

Jeda and her father would spend the days creating wonderful new things together, using glorious shades of colour and light to bring them to life, but in the evening her mother would fill her world with words. They would snuggle in close together, and Rahami would take a comb and braid her daughter’s hair. She would reach back into her childhood, remembering the stories her father had told her. Stories of the hyena men and the snake women who disguised themselves as beautiful strangers, arriving in villages and tricking gullible young people into marrying them before stealing them away to their fate.

While Jeda had never travelled to the place of her mother’s childhood, she knew it vividly through these stories. She heard of talking chickens, eagles with sparkling, vibrant feathers and a magic needle to whom the rainbow willingly surrendered her colours. Her eyes widened in wonder as she imagined the sheer power of the deities who hurled each other across the Universe: the Mother of Fish in her robes of blue, the awesome power of the deity of beauty and divinity whose yellow skirts flowed as she danced around the world. Time and time again Jeda would insist on hearing the tale of the old hunched woman who, tired of the sky weighing down on her shoulders, furiously knocked it back up into the heavens with her walking stick, where it remained to this day.

But often Rahami would share the stories she had learnt in her new world.

‘Tell me, Jeda,’ she would begin, ‘what would you do if you met a wolf in the woods?’ Then she would weave her story, leaving the child spellbound.

The child grew up with stories of changelings and selkies, of the bogle, of the wandering poet who rode on a horse through the skies holding on to the fairy queen, wondering at the rivers of blood and tears below. She learned of the soldier forced to leave his loved one and how they would never again meet by the bonny, bonny banks of their beloved loch. She heard of princesses flinging their hair out of tall towers and children abandoned to the forest because there was not enough food for them to eat at home.

‘Did the witch die?’ Jeda asked, after hearing what happened following the discovery of a gingerbread house, but Rahami would extend the mystery and leave things unsaid. Fuelled by these stories, Jeda many a time imagined herself playing the roles of warrior, ruler and healer, her dreams being so intense she woke up exhausted. Other times, she lay there, awake, a silly smile plastered over her face.

‘Sleep, precious one,’ Rahami would say, as she gently kissed her daughter’s cheek and stroked her hair before closing the bedroom door behind her. years later, Jeda would remember these moments as perhaps the happiest times of her life.

 

• • •

 

How wonderful it would have been if everyone loved those stories as much as Rahami and Jeda, but that was not the case. Rahami’s best friend was Aunty, a larger, more opulent version of herself. While Rahami was quiet, Aunty was loud. While Rahami was not overly keen on shopping, Aunty would often arrive laden with bags, exhausted but happy. While Rahami preferred the natural look, Aunty would deftly fold the fabric of richly coloured headwraps into magnificent shapes that framed her face perfectly. Her mascara was thick, her lips a bright red and her numerous handbags were filled with all kinds of interesting niceties.

‘Aunty is coming, sweetheart!’ her mother would say.

‘you’re going to Aunty’s house!’ said her father.

‘Come, greet Aunty!’ Aunty would exclaim as she threw her arms out wide to embrace Jeda. As a child, Jeda never knew her by any other name. The comforting smell of warm bread and cinnamon surrounded her.

Jeda sometimes had the feeling that if Aunty squeezed a little harder she would be sucked into her enormous bulk and disappear forever. But she loved Aunty. There was always something to eat whenever she was around. In fact, if there was no food available within five minutes of Aunty requesting some, she would become visibly annoyed. And if Jeda refused to sit and eat with her, out would come one of her famous sayings: ‘Jeda, if someone eats alone, how can they discuss the taste of the food with others?’

Jeda never knew how to respond to that one, so she would always feel obliged to have a little something, even if it were just a bite.

While Aunty loved spouting words of wisdom, she was less keen on stories. It always began with a kissing of the teeth and a roll of the eyes. ‘Why? Why do you insist on telling her this nonsense?’ she would say to Rahami. ‘She will start having crazy ideas.’

‘Nothing wrong with crazy ideas!’ Rahami would retort, and Jeda would feel a little wave of exhilaration, imagining her mother as David defeating the giant Goliath.

‘Does she know of the Sermon on the Mount? Hmm? How He fed the five thousand? Be wary,’ Aunty would warn, ‘the road you are walking. Stories can be dangerous!’

‘And that is why I am so lucky to have you. you tell her those stories. There are too many others I want to share,’ Rahami would reply, before jumping up, kissing Aunty on the head and attending to something.

Aunty would inevitably raise her eyebrows, gesticulate wildly or furiously cross her arms. Jeda would always leave the room at this point, fearful of being drawn into a loud battle, but had she waited a few minutes she would have found them laughing loudly over some nonsense in the kitchen, chattering away in a language she did not understand.

 

Blood and Gold by Mara Menzies is published Birlinn Ltd, priced £12.99

 Victoria Williamson has loved Burns’ poetry since she was in school, and her latest book for children Hag Storm takes ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ as its spooky inspiration. Here she tells us how Burns has influenced her throughout her life.

 

Hag Storm
By Victoria Williamson
Published by Cranachan

 

The dedication at the front of my new children’s book reads, ‘For Mrs Stewart, who first introduced me to the poetry of Robert Burns during a memorable year in Primary Four.’ It was during this year when I was eight, that I first learned about the poetry of Robert Burns, and seeds of the story that would grown into Hag Storm over thirty years later were sown. My school ran an annual Burns competition every January, supported by the Burns Federation (now the Robert Burns World Federation). We studied the poetry of Burns, discovering more about the meaning of Scots words and the history of the period, before learning to write and recite his poems. To this day, I can still remember the inspirational ‘A Man’s a Man for a’ That’, the stirring ‘Scots Wha Hae’, and the poignant ‘To a Mouse.’ But it was ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ that really captured my imagination, and I found the story of witches at Halloween both spellbinding and spine-chilling all at the same time.

 

I’ve always loved autumn ever since I was a young child. Some of my earliest memories are of kicking up the red and orange leaves that covered the path on the way to drop my older brother off to school when he started primary one. Just up the hill from our school in Kirkintilloch was a farm estate full of ruined Victorian buildings, an overgrown walled garden, and spooky forest walks. In the autumn it was a place of magic. When the sun was shining, gleaming conkers were piled on the ground, the biggest ones hanging tantalisingly out of reach high up in the old horse chestnut trees. But come late afternoon, the sun would drop low over the fields, shrouding the forest trails in darkness and mystery. It was the perfect place to imagine witches holding secret meetings by moonlight, and looking out of my classroom window in primary four, I could see where the tree line began at the edge of the fields. I’d never been to Alloway, so when we began studying the poem that told the tale of Tam’s encounter with the witches in the Auld Kirk, and his desperate dash to safety on his horse across the Brig o’ Doon, I imagined it all taking place in the forests at the top of the hill. In my head the Auld Kirk was one of the ruined buildings in the Gartshore Estate, and the bridge was a crossing over the Luggie river that ran through Kirkintilloch.

I didn’t get to see the ‘real’ scene of Tam’s flight from the witches until I visited Alloway for the first time in 2003. Learning about his early life in the old cottage turned-museum where Burns was born, all of the poems I’d studied as a child seemed to come to life, sparking the idea of a  novel about ‘Rab’ not as an adult, but as a boy growing up in a world full of folklore and tales of the supernatural told round the kitchen fire on dark nights. Despite the fact that it was a warm June day, the Auld Kirk seemed full of full of mystery and suspense, and the bridge over the River Doon looked just as dramatic in the sunlight as I’d imagined it by the light of the Halloween moon all those years ago when I’d first heard about Tam’s dash for the keystone.

I still have the Burns competition certificates and photographs from my school years, and even the original short summary I wrote of ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ when I was in primary four. But the most important keepsakes from my years studying Burns in primary school are my love of his poetry, and the story of Rab as a boy that was sparked by ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ and my first visit to his birthplace museum. Researching the life of Burns for my book has led to a desire to discover more about the historical and social contexts that influenced his poetry. I recently began a course through the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Robert Burns Studies which looks at the life, works and legacy of ‘the Bard’, and for anyone who would like a chance to explore his work further online, they also run a wonderful free course twice a year in January and July:

https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/critical/research/researchcentresandnetworks/robertburnsstudies/courses/poemssongsandlegacymooc/

I’m hoping that my retelling of Rab’s early life which is based partly on historical research, partly on ‘Tam o’ Shanter’, and partly on my own wild imaginings of Halloween, will help children discover a love of Burns for themselves. It’s thanks to my teachers, and to the Burns Federation, that I got the chance to learn about Burns and his poetry, and without that early introduction, this book would never have been written. In recognition of that, and in order to support the great work that’s done to promote children’s appreciation of the poetry of Burns in schools, twenty percent of my author royalties for Hag Storm will be donated to the Robert Burns World Federation.

 

Hag Storm by Victoria Williamson is published by Cranachan, priced £7.99.

In a time when there is still a small amount of anxiety about dancing the night away (and sometimes morning!) in loud, crowded, sweaty clubs, Voodoo Daze is a collection of short stories and poetry by Jason Golaup and Stephen Watt , that is a welcome celebration of the heady days of clubbing in the ’90s. Enjoy these extracts with your hands in the air!

 

Extracts taken from Voodoo Daze
By Jason Golaup and Stephen Watt
Published by Speculative Books

 

St Vitus

People in Germany celebrated the feast of Vitus by dancing before the Saint’s statue. This dancing was named “Saint Vitus Dance” and was given to the neurological disorder ‘Sydenham Chorea’ which is characterized by rapid, irregular, and aimless involuntary movements of the arms and legs.

 

inside some lollygagging bubble
of light,

everything brakes right down
into slow motion film
for this crucial moment in history
when the room is a flashlight inside my mind.

Utopia. Arcadia. Nirvana.
Sawdust of the promised land
sprinkles from beams
and like a dream, our postman emanates,
throwing shapes in large, white baggy robes
like an archangel; or pasty as a ghost.

He wears a stethoscope
but our doctor and liberator
is aglow in lasers, juggling chemicals
like fireballs, shaking his raver’s
elongated tentacles to subwoofer decibels;
a wacky waving inflatable man
sky-dancing on this song’s invisible molecules.

We name him St Vitus:
Patron Saint of the dancers, the ravers
(as well as comedians and actors).
Upon the podium, our postman dances,
rushes, flushes, rages,
momentarily forgets his wages
to lose time and break on through.

I’m in love with you. Want you to love me too*.

All bodies, here, dancing before his statue.

 

*Lyrics taken from N-Joi “Anthem” (1990)

 

 

Number Ten’s Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Party

Ye hud high unemployment n picket lines. Boays Fae the Black Stuff showin families livin oan the breadline, survivin aff scraps like they feral Harpies in Jason n The Argonauts.

Oan the other side ae the coin, yuppies wur quaffin in snazzy wine bars. Harry Enfield wis actin pure gallus wae a wad a banknotes yellin, ‘LOADSAMONEY!’ at ye.

Nae wunner thur wis a reaction.

House music wis croassin ower fae Chicago n Detroit, infiltratin oor inner cities n housin schemes. Yur boay here wis a bona fide denizen ae Easterhoose, a notorious housin scheme in Glesga. So, I wis ideally positioned tae tune intae it.

Yon Roland TB-303 bass synthesiser wis the catalyst. Maaan… ah found its squelches so addictive. Acid house n smiley culture wur borne n the tabloids wurnae slow tae latch oantae it. They reported oan the acid house craze thit wis sweepin the country, but portrayed it as a passin fad thit wid blow ower like a house a kerds – jist kids in fluorescent apparel, flingin thur erms in the air n chantin, ‘ACIEEEEED!’

The innocence didnae last. They tabloids soon cheynged thur tune wae features like ‘10 Reasons tae Say Naw tae Evil LSD’. We wur labelled as disaffected youths gittin spaced oot oan drugs at illegal werrhoose parties n raves, which screamed right intae the heids a parents who’d thoat thit thur weans wur merely gaun oot in psychedelic colours n dancin like heidcases.

Celebration: The Sound ae the North hud the gen oan the Madchester buzz – music, fashion, art, so many creative personnel talkin aboot the city n that. Wan clip thit captivated me wis a berr chisted dude whose pupils wur that dilated ye coulda flown a jumbo jet through thum. He wis ravin his face aff tae Don’t Miss the Partyline till WHAM! – ye hear the sound ae a prison cell door gittin slammed.

Ye wur never gonnae miss Maggie Thatcher’s party line. Acid house? Pfff. They musta been steyin in wan – The Acid Houses a Parliament – cos they came up wae a Bill tae ban gatherins ae merr thin twinty people listenin tae repetitive beats.

Whit?! Bannin folk fae listenin tae repetitive noayses? Wur they aw sittin aboot werrin earmuffs in therr cos aw ye hear is sarcastic groans n, ‘Order, order,’ sarcastic groans n, ‘Order, order,’ sarcastic groans n…

Whit kina hallucinogenics wur they oan tae dream up a Bill like that? They shoulda been puntin that gear oot at the raves thumsels if it wis that powerful. N don’t kid me oan thur wurnae any peeved aff young renegade Tory ravers. Visualise it troops: wan a Maggie’s posse ravin and coinin it in oan the auld LSD (pounds, shillings, n pence) spreadin the flow a tablets, giein The Vicky tae Thatcher; thus, spreadin a drug problem thit The Iron Wumman wis tryin tae eradicate.

Did we kerry oan ravin jist tae challenge authority? Nahhh. We never saw oorsels as rebels. We wur young. Daein the hings thit ye dae whin yur young. It wis 1990. Our Summer a Love. Ah felt electrified tae be part a somethin thit wis thrivin within a free-spirited n vibrantly creative climate.

Ah wis as happy as a sandboay compilin mix tapes in ma bedroom. Acid house merged wae Madchester, techno, n rave, creatin wan monumental cauldron thit wis burnin in ma soul n makin me feel like ah hud an identity. Ah cut through Easterhoose wae ma ghettoblaster in tow, hypnotisin strangers tae the beats; n those strangers became friends. Huddled roon a ghetto thit’s pumpin euphoric chants, mechanical rhythms, n bleeps mighta satisfied many a teenager. But we craved merr. We became rave junkies n went ravin at Peggy’s nightclub, meetin other likeminded souls; ultimately discoverin thit yur no a solitary aficionado ae rave culture cos thur’s others oot therr fae aw ower Glesga n beyond.

Ferr do’s – a bit a rave anarchy did occur en route tae Peggy’s oan the fifty wan. The bus hudnae even goat ootae Queenslie yit whin Vinny Lambie went, ‘COME ON AH THOUGHT THERE WAS A PARTY IN HERE!’ aff Awesome 3’s rave anthem Hard Up n booted a windae in. The alarm went aff so we even goat the sounds ae oor ain rave horns. But everybody bolted in fear ae additional sirens wae flashin lights fae the Easterhoose polis.

Ah never did fathom Vinny’s reason fur daein that. Mibbe he thoat thit he wis wan ae they Harpies n wahnted tae fly oot the windae tae Peggy’s insteid ae takin public transport like the rest ae us.

 

Voodoo Daze by Jason Golaup and Stephen Watt is published by Speculative Books, priced £9.99.

Bobby Gillespie’s memoir Tenement Kid takes him from his childhood days in Glasgow, through to his cultural awakening when Punk came along, to his early days of music stardom with the iconic The Jesus and Mary Chain and Primal Scream, ending just as the seminal Screamadelica is released. Enjoy this collection of songs that were childhood favourites, and formative memories.

 

Tenement Kid
By Bobby Gillespie
Published by White Rabbit Books

 

She Loves You – The Beatles

Although his mum was more of a Stones fan, Bobby Gillespie’s earliest recording is of him singing along with The Beatles.

 

Cryin’ Time – Ray Charles

 

Moanin’ the Blues – Hank Williams

 

San Quentin – Johnny Cash

 

Where’s the Playground Susie – Glen Campbell

 

Streets of Baltimore – Charley Pride

 

Rip Off – T Rex

 

Time – David Bowie

 

 

Hellraiser – The Sweet

Hellraiser was the first single Bobby Gillespie bought in 1973.

 

This Flight Tonight – Nazareth

 

Next – The Sensational Alex Harvey Band

 

I’ve Got the Music in Me – Kiki Dee

 

 

Don’t Believe a Word – Thin Lizzy

Bobby Gillespie’s first gig was Thin Lizzy in Glasgow’s Apollo.

 

Tenement Kid by Bobby Gillespie is published by White Rabbit Books, priced £20.00.

Part-girl, part-cat, Avery Buckle has always known she’s a little different (after all, her tail is a bit of a giveaway). What Avery doesn’t yet know is that she is the only one who can uncover a forgotten magical secret and bring back a great lost wizard… Winner of The Kelpies Prize, The Spellbinding Secret of Avery Buckle is a warm, quirky magical debut novel from a wonderful new voice in children’s fiction. Full of magical heart, it’s a perfect October read for children aged 8-12.

 

Extract taken from The Spellbinding Secret of Avery Buckle
By Hannah Foley
Published by Kelpies

 

Her tail was the reason Avery always went to the school Halloween disco dressed as a cat. Halloween was the only time in the whole year when she could show her tail and no one would bat an eyelid. If you had asked her, she would have said it was just part of her, in the same way that Low wore glasses or some of the kids in her class spoke different languages. She would have said it was a ‘normal difference’.

But deep down Avery knew nobody else had a tail, and although it was great for helping her balance and climb where no one else could, it did make sitting neatly in class very tricky. And because no one else had one, Avery kept her tail hidden under her clothes, except on Halloween.

*

Inside the disco, Avery swept across the floor, an ink‑black silhouette against the dancing lights of red and gold and green. Witches and monsters, ghosts and devils wheeled around her. Avery’s tail flew out behind her, seeming to curl gently this way and that of its own accord. She felt a thrill of freedom. Tonight, for once, she could just be herself.

Low ran up to her, all feathers and beak, dressed as an owl. ‘So, what do you think?’ he asked, arms held out so she could fully admire his costume mastery.

‘Brilliant!’ she grinned. ‘It suits you.’

He grinned back. ‘Have you tried these wriggly worms? I don’t think we had them last year.’ He offered her a crumpled paper bag full of warm, sticky worm-shaped sweets.

She grimaced. ‘I think I’ll pass, thanks.’

Low shrugged. ‘Don’t you get bored of always coming as a cat?’ he asked between enthusiastic chews. ‘Your tail’s always cool, though ‒ will you let me try it on?’ Before Avery could stop him, he’d given it a hard pull.

‘OW!’ Avery yelped, glaring at him.

‘Avery!’ Low stared back, mouth open, a half-chewed gummy worm in danger of escaping. ‘Your tail, it’s… it’s a-attached. And it’s warm… like it’s… r-real!’

But Avery didn’t get the chance to reply. Suddenly, there was a high-pitched screeching sound and the music came to an abrupt halt.

The disco lights flickered and then went out, plunging the school hall into thick darkness. Then there was full‑scale panic; children screamed, and bodies bumped and bounced off each other in the chaos.

Avery froze.

Something didn’t feel right. Something was far more not-right than a simple blackout at the school disco.

She had the creeping, uneasy feeling again; she could sense a dark, menacing presence.

Avery looked around the hall with dread. Her night vision (a handy benefit of being part cat) helped her to see movement through the pitch-black. She stared in horror as a dense shape began to grow out of the floor. Within it was a writhing, thrashing mass of shadowy creatures.

Avery’s heart pounded.

‘There was someone watching in the shadows!’ she whispered to herself in horror. ‘I didn’t imagine it. And now they’re here, and they’re after me!’

The thought hit her like a speeding train. She didn’t know how she knew this with so much certainty, she just did, deep down in her heart. She knew they were bad, and she had to get away. But where was Low?

Avery could feel the shadows slithering and snarling, hissing doom and destruction into the air. Above the shifting shapes she could make out teachers directing children to safety, but they couldn’t see the creatures in the darkness – the creatures that were coming for Avery.

She had to get out.

Swiftly and silently she dodged through the crowds, deftly winding her way until she found the exit. But out in the foyer more writhing shadows blocked her path, snatching out for her with long twisting arms. They had no real faces, no eyes or noses, but Avery could see rows of small sharp teeth in gaping mouths and black, flicking tongues. She backed away, groping with her hands against the wall, until she reached out into empty space.

The door to the kitchens.

She dived inside, knocking a stack of pans off a work surface with a clatter. The lights were out in here too, but Avery could make out her surroundings enough to be sure there was no way out.

Panic filled her, and she unconsciously put her hand in her pocket, wrapping her fingers around her collection of objects. She closed her eyes and felt her heart steady, her mind clear. Wasn’t there supposed to be some way up into the school attic from the kitchens?

She began opening doors, finding only cupboards, then, with a flood of relief, discovering a steep staircase behind a latched door. Avery leapt up the steps and heaved the cover of a wooden hatch out of the way, then pulled herself through and crouched on the edge of the hole.

The attic smelt musty, and it was littered with broken chairs. A square of moonlight at the furthest end illuminated the slanting space.

A window!

Heart pounding, she sprinted for it, not daring to look behind her. She imagined the shadowy figures filling the kitchens below her like smoke.

Bright stars pricked the night sky outside, but no matter how hard she pushed, the window wouldn’t budge.

‘No, no, no!’ Avery muttered desperately, feeling the nails holding the edges of the frame shut.

Suddenly, the fur on her tail stood up on end. She didn’t need to turn around to know that the shadows had found her. She was out of time.

Picking up a broken chair leg, she shielded her face as she swung it back and blindly began smashing at the glass. The cold night air rushed in just as she felt hot breath on her neck.

As a clawed tendril of dense shadow snaked towards her leg, Avery scrambled through the smashed window and jumped.

She leapt into the night sky, an arched silhouette against the white full moon. Momentarily she dropped, twisting in mid-air, then her legs swung up in front of her. Avery felt a sickening tightening of her costume as she lurched to a halt and was pulled upwards. She hung dejectedly, too weary to struggle. They’d got her.

‘Did we get away?’ a familiar voice panted from above.

Avery wriggled around in alarm, briefly in freefall again as strong talons lost their grip before gently regaining their hold.

‘Woah, you’re heavier than you look.’

‘Low? Is that you? You’re… an owl! A real one! And you’re flying!’

‘Yeah, though not for much longer if I have to keep carrying you.’

‘Right, right,’ said Avery, suspending disbelief for the sake of urgency. Peering round, she scanned the roof of the school hall but there was nothing there. The shadows had gone.

‘I’m actually not joking,’ wheezed Low. ‘You’re really heavy.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ve got a weird feeling something’ll come to me,’ replied Avery, feeling almost giddy with relief.

 

The story continues in The Spellbinding Secret of Avery Buckle – the perfect read for spooky season, ideal for children aged 8­–12! Available now from the Kelpies website and your local bookshop.

Want to know more? Check out this great conversation between Hannah Foley and Elizabeth Ezra, author of the spook-tacular Ruby McCracken: Tragic Without Magic!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rjp4twy2sc

 

The Spellbinding Secret of Avery Buckle by Hannah Foley is published by Kelpies, priced £7.99

When May Morgenstern is bequeathed a collection of letters, little does she realise that she will bear witness to a story that will take her across continents, into the lives of iconic writer Henry Miller and heavyweight boxer Sonny Liston, and on the hunt for a dangerous truth. In this extract, we are introduced to May and the beginning of her new adventure.

 

Extract taken from The Girl, The Crow, The Writer and the Fighter
By George Paterson
Published by Into Creative

 

That’s enough, thought May switching off her small television. She took a towel from the radiator and wrapped it around her wet, still soapy head. As exciting as it had been to take flight and see, if not experience Las Vegas, May was glad to be back in Auburn. Comfortable. Where the milk is sour and the piles of washing reach to the sky. Good to be home. No work and a night of nothing much in particular from the comfort of her own bed. Music on, coffee percolating. Nothing like a warm cup on a blustery day, ain’t that right May?

She missed Elie. They’d only known each other for a few years but the old lady had brought some much-needed colour to her days. As for her nights, sure, she had the occasional date but not many since Connie left for Portland. She was a fully-fledged junior school teacher now. Good for Connie. She’d come back for the holidays, when she could, but the truth was that there weren’t too many unattached young bucks of their age left in Auburn and even fewer who frequented The Columbus.

May returned to Elie’s bequeath.

Here goes.

She loosened the strap, before placing the box on her bed to open. Released, the leather binding was no longer stiff and taut as it had been while protecting its precious cargo. May slid it off and left it on the floor, spent.

Open the box.

May placed her fingernail under the hooked clasp and with a crisp pop, the box was opened. The smell of cut wood and old paper instantly filled her nostrils. The envelope at the top was not sealed. It contained a handful of monochrome photographs.

First out, a cowboy. Or maybe he just looked like one. Square jawed, Stetson, handsome. There was a name imprinted on the bottom righthand corner but it was a little obscured. Chas. Langdon? A clue? May turned it over.

‘My darling Elie, only three more weeks until I am able to dust off this dirt and return to your loving arms. Stay true for me as I am for you. Your beloved, Clifford.’
Photo Likeness made by Chas. Langdon, Artist. Temperance, TX

So that’s Clifford? What can I say, she thought, the old lady had taste. Another photo of the same man then one of him with a much younger Elie. May touched the frayed, fading picture of her friend and sighed.

So beautiful.

‘Prettiest girl I ever saw.’

In the box, beneath the photographs was a book, bound in thick leather and held shut by a twisted clasp. May opened the front cover and read the following, handwritten inscription…

 

‘Dearest E,

It has been so long since I made it down the coast to see you. I feel a great sense of guilt about that, but I know you’ll understand that there are certain physical inhibitors which certainly do not excuse my absence but may mitigate. You have your mother’s eyes…

Many years ago, I made a request of you and, given that I feel the cold chill more with each passing year, the time to deliver is nigh. On certain things, my memory isn’t what it once was but with regards this I am crystal clear; our critical moment has arrived.

Stay well my sweet. Wherever the spirits take us…

H.’

Not what she was expecting.

C was for Clifford but H? This was an entirely different kettle of cod.

Who was this H and what was he to her? May thought. Another lover? A brother? No, you don’t refer to a sibling as ‘my sweet’ now, do you? And why if she deemed me important enough to be her only confidante during her dotage AND the sole beneficiary of her last will and testament, why didn’t she tell me about H? May picked up the handful of letters from Clifford and scoured them for any references to H.

‘I was sorry to hear about Henry’s fall. I hope that it wasn’t too serious. He was something. I know that he didn’t care much for me and in those awkward, early days, I perhaps felt a little uncomfortable about your relations with him. I believe he grew to understand that my intentions were honourable. Next time you write him, pass on my regards and tell him that I’ll gladly let him bum a smoke from me when he recovers.’

At that moment, a thrash of rain struck May’s window. The almighty howl which accompanied it, startled her.

So, H is Henry. But who is Henry? Returning to the book, May pored over the inscription, hoping that perhaps a clue would present itself.

Nothing.

She quickly thumbed through the rest of the book, at least a couple of hundred pages of varying sizes, written in pencil, in blue and black ink, but clearly by the same hand. May returned to the start.

‘There was never a grand plan. None of this was intended. Doors opened, I walked through. Gates locked, I climbed over. I guess that this behemothic conundrum we call life comes like one of those waves that rises from the bowels of the Great Pacific, crashing into the cliffs and coves near my cottage. Sometimes you sense it coming, sometimes you don’t. I’ve found that when the wave comes, it’s prudent not to worry about the one certainty; getting wet. Don’t argue with me on this. Remember, if it’s old, it must be right! Ha! Without wanting to sound like some sub-Kerouac, coffee house beat poet, I guess that the only wisdom I’m qualified to impart is just… ride the wave. Or ‘Embrace the moisture’. No, scratch that. Go with the first line.’

May turned the page…

 

‘I first saw her on the corner of Macon and Ralph, outside the yellow brick house where Mrs Ottmaier gave piano lessons, a dime an hour. She was fifteen, I was two years younger. Decades on, I recall her every detail. The emerald-coloured coat, her flame coloured hair tied up beneath a wide brimmed hat, protecting her alabaster skin from the late summer sun. She had a parcel of meat for her father, cut the way he liked it by Unger the butcher. Both men were quite important figures in Bushwick. Most of the neighbourhood, like my own family, was German but the Seawards, your mother’s people, were old English, Social Register types. One of her great uncles served as a Senator. They had class.

The same cannot be said of the Militz family who lived nearby. The father was loud and coarse – not MY type of coarse, of course! – and was an unforgiving taskmaster for the engineers and the apprentices who laboured under his tutelage. I wasn’t in their direct orbit but was friends with a few boys who ran with their youngest, Casper. An indulged boy, always with spending cash, he tended to attract those who didn’t mind prostrating oneself for ready tidbits. He was tall, pasty, heavy set and like his father, had a capacity for vindictive and cruel behaviour. Very different to his neighbour, and the object of my ardour, Cora. She was truly precious. Kind and thoughtful. One day, I shall speak with her father, I thought and ask for her hand. I had an inkling that’s what happened but I didn’t know exactly why. I was so young, I just wanted to be close to her. To see her was to voyage in the blue and uncharted firmament. My one true love. My dear Elie, I cannot begin to tell you the things I’ve seen and done in this wretched life but the purest and most Godly truth I’ve ever known was a smile from the lips of Cora, your virtuous mother. I wished dearly that I could have been there for her and stopped Casper but I wasn’t and that regret I’ll take to the grave.

The burghers of Bushwick made sure that the Militz family – and their business – bore a terrible price for what happened but to the boy himself? It was as if he’d snapped a shoelace. A minor inconvenience. After backing him with everything they had, his family was sinking. And in the face of that, he cast them aside and sailed on, surrounded by bootlickers and backers, impressed by his hard shell and seeming invulnerability. He did business with both the Shapiro’s and the Amberg brothers but never once spent a night in the Tombs or was dispatched to Sing-Sing. Your mother though was sent upstate to recuperate from the ordeal – and to prepare for your arrival.’

 

The paper, turned up and dry around the edges, felt fragile, as if it was not long for this realm. May turned the page carefully and read more.

 

The Girl, The Crow, The Writer and the Fighter by George Paterson is published by Into Creative, priced £16.99.

With Halloween fast approaching, we asked Craig Ian Mann, author of Phases of the Moon: A Cultural History of the Werewolf Film, to pick 5 lesser-known werewolf films to watch on Halloween. If you can handle it, read on . . .

 

Phases of the Moon: A Cultural History of the Werewolf Film
By Craig Ian Mann
Published by Edinburgh University Press

 

I wanted to write Phases of the Moon: A Cultural History of the Werewolf Film for many reasons, the first being a lifelong love of werewolf fiction. But another was that – if you’ll excuse an awful pun – werewolves in cinema have long been underdogs, never celebrated in the same way as their bloodsucking (or even brain-eating) brethren. Vampires and zombies are the subjects of far more films and, as a consequence, a much larger body of academic work.

There are a few reasons for this, some of them purely industrial. Werewolves are notoriously difficult to realise on the screen; horror fans raised on The Howling (1981) and An American Werewolf in London (1981) expect to see expensive practical effects and complex transformation scenes that are often out of reach for productions with lower budgets (and, of course, there is no horror fan with a keener eye for poor CGI than one with a taste for werewolf movies). Others are a little more abstract. There is a prevailing idea that the werewolf is thematically limiting, something of a one-note monster that solely functions as a manifestation of the ‘beast within’ (or the id run rampant).

While I can’t disagree that werewolf movies are often prohibitively expensive to make, my book is designed to take issue with that second point – and illustrate that werewolves, like vampires or zombies, have always been multifaceted monsters that have evolved in step with social, cultural and political developments. With that in mind, here are 5 lesser-known werewolf films to watch on Halloween that illustrate the monster’s metaphorical potential, all of them great choices for a Halloween that falls on the night of a full moon.

The Werewolf (1956)

While early werewolf films such as Werewolf of London (1935) and The Wolf Man (1941) locate the monster purely within the realms of the supernatural, by the 1950s the origin of werewolfery was being traced to the world of science. I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) sees a juvenile delinquent enter a primal state under hypnosis, while The Werewolf (1956) drew on atomic paranoia. Featuring perhaps the only radioactive werewolf in the history of cinema, it plays on fears of nuclear annihilation by having its unfortunate protagonist, Duncan Marsh (Steven Rich), turn into a lupine mutant after he is injected with irradiated wolf’s blood. A clear example of the werewolf’s metaphorical versatility, The Werewolf is as much a science fiction movie as it is a horror film and played on the bottom half of the bill with Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956).

Werewolves on Wheels (1971)

Werewolves on Wheels (1971) is to werewolves what Night of the Living Dead (1968) is to zombies. Produced by the turbulent social, cultural and political conditions of the late 1960s and 1970s, a period defined by the Vietnam War, the birth of the counterculture and the battle for civil rights, it pits a werewolf biker gang against devil-worshipping monks in the arid desert. A fiercely political film aligned to the ‘New Horror’ movement frequently associated with the likes of George A. Romero, Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven, it imagines a supernatural struggle between its bikers – standing in for the free-spirited men and women of the counterculture – and its satanic coven, an embodiment of the conservative mainstream. Nowhere near as mindless or exploitative as its title would have you believe, this is a bleak and desolate film that suggests political division can tear entire nations apart.

Silver Bullet (1985)

Based on Stephen King’s novella Cycle of the Werewolf (1983) and produced from a screenplay penned by King himself, Silver Bullet (1985) is a very different beast to the more famous werewolf movies of the 1980s. While An American Werewolf in London (1981) and The Howling (1981) are largely concerned with body-horror, Silver Bullet takes aim at conservative communities as it drops a vicious werewolf into the small town of Tarker’s Mills, Maine. As the townspeople divide into camps and indulge in petty in-fighting, it’s up to a young boy named Marty Coslaw (Corey Haim) to uncover the werewolf’s identity and put a stop to its rampage. Featuring a standout dream sequence that sees the citizens of Tarker’s Mills transform into werewolves inside their local church (all set to the sound of ‘Amazing Grace’), Silver Bullet is an indictment of Ronald Reagan’s America that finds monstrosity in the insularity of small-town life.

When Animals Dream (2014)

While they have never been as prolific as wolf-men, she-wolves have been at the centre of some of the most important werewolf films in the history of horror cinema – including the very first, 1913’s The Werewolf. Since then, female werewolves have appeared in films from Cry of the Werewolf (1944) to Bloodthirsty (2020) via Werewolf Woman (1976), Ginger Snaps (2000) and Wildling (2018). The Danish When Animals Dream (2014) is an excellent example of the feminist werewolf film, which sees sixteen-year-old Marie (Sonia Suhl) discover she has inherited werewolfism from her mother. But rather than fear the curse, Marie fears the men in her life who would force her to suppress her true nature. Here, as in many modern she-wolf films, werewolfery represents emancipation rather than monstrosity – a marker of difference that allows women to break free of patriarchal bonds.

Howl (2015)

A film for fans of Dog Soldiers (2002), Paul Hyett’s Howl (2015) could crudely be described as ‘werewolves on a train,’ but it is far more than that brief synopsis suggests. On a late shift, long-suffering conductor Joe (Ed Speelers) finds himself on a broken-down train in the middle of dense woodland. With the driver missing, he tries and fails to keep a diverse range of passengers happy. Meanwhile, a pack of werewolves emerges from the trees, brought to life with a fascinating and unique creature design that diverges from our traditional conception of werewolves and wolf-men. A riotously entertaining, smart and socially conscious film, Howl ultimately uses its werewolves to indict austerity Britain; while the passengers inside the train represent a cross-section of British society, the werewolves outside embody a forgotten underclass – diseased, emaciated and, unfortunately for Joe and his passengers, very hungry.

As the full moon creeps closer, now all you have to do is to decide which werewolf films to watch on Halloween!

This article appeared on the Edinburgh University Press blog on the book’s release.

 

Phases of the Moon: A Cultural History of the Werewolf Film by Craig Ian Mann is published by Edinburgh University Press, priced £19.99.

 

 

The pleasures of food and drink are always worth celebrating whatever the season, and leafing through the many treats in Ghillie Basan’s latest book will provide a whole lot of inspiration in spoiling yourself, while sharing stories of the many wonderful food locations in the Highlands. How lucky we are to have all this on our doorstep!

 

Extracts taken from A Taste of the Highlands
By Ghillie Basan
Published by Birlinn Ltd

 

Traditional Highland Cranachan

Cranachan is a traditional soft fruit brose, which was once a dish of celebration, particularly at harvest time. In some crofting households the fruit and cream were put on the table and everyone made their own mix adding whisky and honey. Sometimes a charm or a ring would be put at the bottom of the oatmeal brose – the person who found the ring would be the next to get married, or the charm might bring good fortune.

Also called ‘cream-crowdie’, the cranachan of my teenage years wasn’t nearly as exciting – only appearing on Burns Night, made with sludgy crowdie cheese that tasted like it been strained through someone’s unwashed tights and raspberries out of a tin! It was enough to put me off it for life – until one day a mouthful of creamy, nutty oatmeal, lightly laced with whisky and heather honey, topped with fresh, sweet raspberries from Blairgowrie made absolute sense. Nowadays, cranachan is regarded as a national pudding, served all over the country at any time of the year and the recipe has evolved to include whipped cream, yoghurt and a variety of cream cheeses and fruits. It is very much a dish that is prepared according to taste, particularly the ratio of oatmeal to cream and the measurement of a good dram. In this recipe I have tried to stick to the traditional whisky-soaked brose but lightened the layers with a puff of whipped cream. This is the way we enjoy it in our home. With three great Highland products – oatmeal, raspberries and whisky – it could be said that this is the Highlands in a bowl!

 

 

Tip most of the toasted oatmeal into a bowl – keep back 1 tablespoon for the top – and pour in the cream and whisky. Leave the oatmeal to soak it all up for at least 2 hours. Stir in the honey and add more whisky or cream to your taste. The mixture should feel quite light but the oatmeal will still have a chewy bite to it.

In a separate bowl, whisk the cream to light, frothy peaks and fold in a little sugar, if you like. Select glass bowls or glasses for serving and layer up the cranachan, starting with the soaked brose, followed by raspberries, more of the brose, whipped cream, top with raspberries and finish with the reserved toasted oats. Gently beat in honey and whisky to taste. Spoon the mixture into a serving bowl and top with fresh raspberries.

Serves 2–3

5 tbsp pinhead or medium
oatmeal, toasted in the oven
8 tbsp double cream
2–4 tbsp whisky (I use a local Speyside one)
2 tbsp heather honey
150ml cream, for whipping
1 tsp sugar (optional)
fresh raspberries

 

Bramley Apple, Beetroot and Heather Honey Crumble
(Nethybridge)

At Dell of Abernethy, Polly Cameron puts on the kettle, stokes the fires and props up the kitchen stove, stirring glorious soups and stews with the luring aroma of a cake baking in the oven while she waits for the return of her guests from woodland walks and wild swimming spots. She and her husband, Ross, are passionate about offering true Highland hospitality and making their guests feel welcome. The property, which has now been in Polly’s family for four generations, is situated right on the edge of the Abernethy Nature Reserve in the Cairngorms – the perfect location for the team from the BBC’s Springwatch to set up camp and present the show from the large canvas tipi usually reserved for yoga, fitness, dance, weddings and music gigs.

Previously Polly and Ross had run a successful restaurant, the Ord Ban, in Rothiemurchus so when they took over Dell of Abernethy eight years ago they brought with them their cooking and hosting skills to provide a nurture element to the retreat with carefully planned menus showcasing local growers, producers and artisans. They also grow as much as they can in their organic garden, turning gluts of herbs into pesto and steeping autumn fruits in whisky to make liqueurs. The apples shaken from the trees often end up in delicious and unusual crumbles like this one.

 

Preheat the oven to 180°C (fan 160°C), 350°F, gas mark 4.

In an electric blender, whizz the cooked beetroot with the honey and nutmeg until you have a smooth purée. In a bowl, combine the purée with 50g of the demerara sugar and toss in the cubed apple.

Pack the mixture tightly in a deep ovenproof dish, allowing a few centimetres for the crumble topping.

To make the crumble, pulse the remaining sugar, flour, butter and oats in a food processor or rub together by hand until a good crumble consistency.

Cover the apple mix completely and bake for about 45 minutes, until the crumble is golden brown and the apple is tender. Serve with cream, yoghurt or vanilla ice cream.

Serves 4

2 small cooked beetroot,
cooled and skinned (approx. 150g)
1 large dessert spoon of heather honey
½ tsp grated nutmeg
125g demerara sugar
3 large Bramley apples, peeled, cored and cut into 2cm cubes
75g plain flour
75g butter
75g rolled oats

 

 

Highland Whisky

The word ‘whisky’ derives from the Gaelic uisge beatha (pronounced ‘ooshky bay’), meaning ‘water of life’ and for many Highlanders that is exactly what it is – life is good if there is whisky in the house. Some swear that a dram a day will see them through good health and old age. My nearest neighbour in a croft at the end of the glen ‘will die happy if he has a dram in his hand’, indeed my own father reached the grand age of 91 and his parting breath was enriched by a final dram.

Since the fifteenth century, whisky has been part of life in the Highlands, embroiled in illicit distilling and smuggling, evading excisemen and taxes. At one time whole communities were involved in either making whisky or smuggling it – the subject of myths and legends and the catalyst of many a story. I live in a whisky smuggler’s glen where over the years the tales of illicit stills and excisemen buried in peat bogs have grown congenial arms and legs but that is part of the spirit’s hypnotic pleasure. The aromas and flavours, the company and location, can all add to the dreams and storytelling; it is, after all, a drink of friendship and hospitality.

The Highland whisky region includes Orkney, the Western Isles and parts of Perthshire and Aberdeenshire. Within the boundaries of this book, though, we start at the foot of Argyll in Campbeltown with Springbank Distillery, the only distillery in the Highlands to do all its own malting, distilling, maturing and bottling on site, head up to Thurso to Wolfburn Distillery, the most northerly on the mainland, and we include Speyside, the biggest whisky making region in Scotland, where the modern Scotch whisky industry was born. The Highland whisky region is vast, characterised by diverse landscapes, geology, weather conditions, water sources, soil and vegetation, all of which bear some impact on the flavour of the whisky or the style of a particular distillery. The commonality is in the process – the malting, fermenting, distilling and maturing – but the singularity of whisky, the complexity of flavour and texture, the finish on the palate, is rooted in the location, the decision-making of the distiller, and time. Whisky is a creature of the land and time.

Should you drink whisky neat, with water, or on ice? I have worked with so many whisky groups from different parts of the world that I have learned that best way to enjoy whisky is to drink the one you like, the way you like it. But there is nothing quite like the enjoyment of a dram in its natural environment: the mist softly falling down the mountain slopes, miles of peaty moorland peppered white with wild cotton, little green lochans and the purplest heather you have ever seen, lashing rain followed by bursts of sunlight catching every droplet of water on the leaves and trees, horizons you never quite reach and silence that you can hear. Your cheeks feel tight and cold as your warm breath floats in the chill air, but when you nose that glass warming in your hands the aromas of larch and pine and coconut-scented gorse, heather honey and meadowsweet, smoky peat and salty air, even the fruity smell of the dung being spread to fertilise the fields, will fill your senses as you tip the dram to your lips to taste. A Highland dram in the Highland air – we’re back to where we started this the book with the goût de terroir!

Slàinte mhath!

 

A Taste of the Highlands by Ghillie Basan is published by Birlinn Ltd, priced £25.00

The Broken Pane is a beautiful debut novel that explores family, love, guilt and loss and will simultaneously break and lift your heart. We hope you enjoy this extract that introduces the family in better times.

 

Extract taken from The Broken Pane
By Charlie Roy
Published by Leamington Books

 

I do not have a first memory of my little brother. I do not remember my mother being pregnant, or her telling me that a baby was coming to live with us. There is an awareness of Nicky’s presence in my life that appears in my childhood recollections, like a bright light. Can anyone honestly say they remember it all accurately?

My mother, Ange, was pregnant again at the age of twenty one. Not an unusual age to be pregnant in those days, though her contemporaries in the maternity clinic were all anxiously patting their first bumps, asking her for advice on cots and layettes. Shortly after her twenty-second birthday and a relatively quick labour that lasted under three hours, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Nicholas James. This time round, my father Mick waited at the hospital, pacing the halls of the ward, grinding one finished cigarette into the standing ashtrays before immediately lighting the next, breaking only to refill his coffee cup, seasoned with a top note from his flask.

A young nurse came to find him in the late afternoon:

‘Congratulations, Sir, it’s a healthy baby boy.’

To the nurse’s surprise, he hugged her in delight. Mick, I mean Dad, always said that she had looked flabbergasted. He only ever used the word when he told this anecdote, savouring the use of it. I suspect he was not entirely certain of the meaning and had picked it up at the time to use in this specific context. I could never use it without picturing my father, sodden in his cups, welling up over the tale of the birth of his son.

He told it well, the birth of his second child, there at his wife’s bedside as soon as he was summoned, how tenderly they kissed, the baby nestling between them. The room was warm and clean, my mother’s blonde hair gently cascading down a shoulder, glowing with her light of happiness, basking in the joy that he had bestowed on her, a perfect boy.

This vignette was often repeated, the beats familiar, and we, his audience, knew to sigh contentedly at the end of the telling.

Nana’s “dear friend” George came to the hospital a few hours later with me clinging to his enormous hand. He held a camera in the other. With it, he took one of our very few family photos. They may have had an unconventional relationship, but he knew how to step up to the part of Grandpa, albeit unofficially.

In it, my father sits on my mother’s left-hand side, half on the bed with a foot still on the floor, his right arm behind her, supporting himself. She is sitting up, with my brother wrapped in a puce pink blanket cradled in her right arm, and I am sitting in front of them all, by my mother’s right knee, a grinning four-year-old, a mass of unruly black curls with my new blue teddy, Mr Blue, that Nana had given me on the day.

Photographic evidence that we could be a perfect family, no cracks on show.

Truth be told that I do not remember that day. The image is imprinted in my mind, soundtracked by the tale of Nicky’s birth.

I do have a few memories from the following year, the year of my fifth birthday. Like the time my friend from nursery school came round and we spread newspapers on the kitchen table and Mum got us paints and paper. It can’t have been Becky. I didn’t become friends with her until primary school. We daubed it all gleefully and laughed. I have incorporated details such as eating biscuits, and smearing paint on each other’s faces. I am able to remember it clearly because there is a photograph of us, our blue, yellow and green hands waving at the camera. I like this memory.

Mick, I mean Dad, swept me up into his arms every morning, with a ‘be good, Duckling’ and a kiss on the forehead. Then he set off to work, giving Mum a peck on the lips on the way out, and I would run to the window to wave, my hair set neatly in bunches.

It was a perfect snow globe time in our lives. I recall being held up so that I could, look down into Nicky’s crib at the sleeping baby, his farm mobile playing a tune as it cranked round, the bright pink pig somehow more incongruous than the blue sheep. I revisit myself sat playing with a rosy-cheeked infant. I paint it in my mind as a warm and happy time, all together. I know this because Mick, I mean Dad, has often told me the stories of how good it was back then, when my mother was a gentle angel, I was a good girl and Nicky was a precious gift.

One of Nicky’s favourites from the Book of 101 Jokes which he carried about for weeks was ‘What is the opposite of a snow globe?’. He would stare intently at the adult he quizzed for a moment before shouting ‘A lava lamp!’ and burst into peals of giggles. His audience would laugh too, relieved to be off the hook. I always thought that wasn’t quite right as a lava lamp has the same mesmerising effect as a snow globe. The exact opposite would be disturbing to watch.

There are times in your life you can hold like a perfect snow globe, some memories are the exact opposite lava lamps, made of real lava, too hot to hold in your mind.

 

The Broken Pane by Charlie Roy is published by Leamington Books, priced £16.99.

The Stone Mirror, by Ian Spring, is a collection of Gothic short fictions merging genres and mixing fact and fiction. Although the themes are often Scottish, the influences are more international: Borges, Poe, Calvino and others. ‘Story Cut Short’ is, appropriately, the shortest and the last story in the book.

 

‘Story Cut Short’ is taken from The Stone Mirror
By Ian Spring
Published by Rymour Books

 

 STORY CUT SHORT

I will be brief. For some time I was employed in a medical capacity at the Sante prison. My role was to ascertain and testify to the death of those lost souls who encountered Madame La Guillotine. (You may think that, in view of their certain end, my presence was hardly necessary; but, as you will see, the pathology of decapitation is more complex than generally imagined).

At 5.30 am, on the twenty-eight of June 1905, I was privileged to be able to conduct an unusual experiment on the murderer Languille. With the agreement of the prisoner, I was allowed to address the capitis. Immediately after the blade had fallen, the eyelids and lips contracted for some five seconds, then the face relaxed, leaving only the white of the conjunctiva visible. Then, there was no doubt, the felon’s eyes fixed on mine. I called his name: ‘Languille!’. He blinked several times in response. This lasted for about 40 seconds then gradually eased until he was motionless.

For several years I conducted these experiments, increasing their sophistication. I devised a device that, attached to the ears, swung the head upside down, thus preventing the spurt of blood from the jugular foramer and extending consciousness. All this time I never saw a face that seemed to exhibit pain or horror. Some rolled their eyes or tried to mouth words. The wicked Landru, subject of my penultimate experiment (who had refused to hear the mass or take a last glass of brandy), I swear, winked at me insolently and remorselessly.

Now I was in the rapture of obsession. I began to think of the moments following decapitation as almost a joyous relief, an escape from corporal and visceral servitude. a moment unpolluted with consequences, a time for contemplation before meeting the one true maker. I thought of the theory that, at the moment just before death, one’s whole life is lived again, but more perfectly. The axe or bullet slow to a stop and devout souls have time to recite their sweetest prayers and make their peace with the corruptible world. I had read that some of the pygmy tribes of Africa, who beheaded their enemies, compassionately attached their heads to a springy sapling so that their last moments seemed like a transport to heaven. Thoughts like these tormented me. I pondered day and night on the same questions. I needed to know.

I devised the machine and nailed the upside down clock to the wall. The trip was set so that, when I released the blade, the stringed device would hold the head in the exact position.

So, now at last I know! The lapse between decapitation and death is at least 54 seconds—just enough time for me to recount this extraordinary…

 

The Stone Mirror by Ian Spring is published by Rymour Books, priced £10.99

American Goddess is a novel that explores an unstable marriage and the consequences of a post-pandemic world looking for hope from an unlikely leader. In this extract, husband and wife, Peter and Ellisha, meet a charismatic professor and her students.

 

Extract taken from American Goddess
By L. M. Affrossman
Published by Sparsile Books

 

Her attention turned back to Zach and Deborah. ‘Where was I?’

‘The infallibility of the deity,’ Zach suggested.

Babs threw him a venomous look. ‘Indeed. What an infallible thing the deity of men has become. He’s been sucking up power for thousands of years, first the power of women then the power of all the other gods. Gods once had weaknesses, you know. They were capricious and angry and jealous. But the God of Abraham lives in a very strange, exalted place. He takes credit for all the good in the world. And when things go wrong, earthquakes, tsunamis, the death of a child, his cronies throw up their hands and say his ways are too damn mysterious to interpret.’

‘Or that it’s our fault because we displeased him.’ This again from the boy.

‘Good point. What does God have to do to get a bad press?’

‘Yes, but isn’t— I mean …Well I think religion is a comfort,’ Deborah said nervously. ‘I mean as a Christian I think that’s the point of religion. To give comfort.’

‘Yes. Yes. That’s always the argument for religion,’ Babs answered. She was lighting a tipped cigarillo despite the sign that clearly read No Smoking above her desk. ‘But for every bit of comfort, how much is there in the way of guilt and fear and sheer inertia to change things? What about Galileo or the American reporter on his knees awaiting a beheading or the poor devils dragged up Castle Hill to be burnt as witches? How much comfort would it be to feel the flames licking about your feet?’ Babs banged her fist down on the table, startling everyone and sending an apple-shaped penholder rolling from the desk. Ellisha bent to pick it up.

‘Dr McBride,’ she said in a soothing voice. ‘Perhaps I should make some tea.’

‘No need. Brought my own.’ After some fumbling about under the desk, she produced a thermos and poured herself a generous measure of a liquid clearly unrelated to tea. She took a gulp then a long drag from the cigarillo. An ectoplasmic cloud of smoke escaped from her mouth. There was something compelling about her sheer hauteur, an insouciance that bordered on the negligent. How on earth does she manage not to set off the smoke detector?

He realised that she had caught him looking. Her gaze wandered up towards the nicotine stain around the detector then back to his with a conspiratorial twinkle. For an instant he felt she was trying to tell him something. But she shrugged and turned back to her students.

In a calmer voice she continued, ‘Our young friend here, Zachariah, doubtless with fewer hairs on his pubes than he has on his chin’—Zach turned scarlet—‘has struck at the heart of the problem. Why are those men and women, with their faith in God their father, so afraid to die? What could be lovelier than to return to the arms of one’s own maker?’

‘Perhaps their faith isn’t strong enough?’ Deborah suggested timidly.

‘Yet this is what they BELIEVE! They fight wars over it, sacrifice their children, lie, murder, rape in its name. A few ghastly ones even go round forgiving everyone. But always, when the darkness nears, they rage against the dying of the light.’ She held up a hand and waved off a protest from Zach. ‘Yes, yes. There are always a few exceptions, the saints, the martyrs, the suicide bombers. But a drop of deadly nightshade in an ocean does not change the ocean.

‘So how do we explain this?’ She paused and looked round the table. The students avoided her eye.

Babs opened her desk drawer, produced an ashtray and stubbed out the remains of the cigarillo. It was a gesture of disgust and everyone knew it.

‘We explain it,’ Babs said in her stinging nettle voice, ‘by showing that the godhead is incomplete. We’re missing something.’

Biting her lip, Deborah ventured, ‘Is it the Goddess? The feminine side of religion?’

Babs drank heartily from her cup then, smacking her lips together, set it down. ‘Perhaps. The world has been too long under the influence of men. But the Goddess isn’t some sort of sticking plaster to mend mankind’s woes.’ She glanced sharply at Ellisha as she said this, revealing that she had recognised her from the start. And, with one of those unanticipated veers of consciousness, she demanded suddenly, ‘And what do you believe, hmm, daughter of a Sanskrit dream? Do you imagine, somewhere deep within you, resides the glassy essence of a soul? A measure of the divine suffice to make the angels weep?’

‘I—’ Ellisha ran her tongue over her bottom lip. ‘I don’t know.’ Clearly, she would have liked to have left it there, but Bab’s headlamp eyes left no scope for concealment. A little expulsion of air, a squirm of her shoulders. ‘I wouldn’t say I believe in nothing. But you’re right. I don’t have a strong sense of belonging to any particular faith. I’ve never found anything that I could really hold on to.’

‘Apart from your rock? Your stone man.’

‘Apart from Peter, yes.’ She darted him a quick, loving look that moved him and made him feel despicable at the same time. Babs was pouring herself more ‘tea’. ‘But you’ve never felt touched by the unseen hand? No thrill of religious experience? The magnum sacramentum hasn’t tingled in your veins?’

Ellisha wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t—’

He could feel her gaze, knew she was appealing to him. What do you think, should I tell? But he couldn’t look her in the eye, and he had no sense that this was a turning point or that Babs’ words were weighted. After a moment, he saw her shrug then square her shoulders. ‘When I was thirteen I was struck by lightning.’

Babs put her flask down. ‘What do you recall?’

‘Not much. It was a beautiful July day. No wind. Clear blue sky.’

‘Is that possible?’ Deborah asked.

‘Oh, it is.’ Babs had hunched forward, chin clasped between her bony fingers. ‘Lightning can travel over twenty miles from where the storm is. And you would have no clue it was coming.’

‘I didn’t,’ Ellisha said, with a laugh. ‘I think I remember a crackling sound. Then I couldn’t see anything but white light for a few seconds. I guess I passed out. Because I don’t remember anything else until I woke up at home, with the doctor examining me.’

‘But you made a full recovery?’ Babs was studying Ellisha as though she was a striking artefact unexpectedly revealed by blowing sands.

‘Mostly. You’re never really okay after a lightning strike. I get headaches and sometimes I see things in my peripheral vision, shadows, flashes, that sort of thing. On the upside, I have an amazing Lichtenberg figure on my back.’

‘A kind of scar?’ Zach asked.

‘Yup. The capillaries got fried under the skin. Sometimes they fade. But mine is still here all these years later. I guess it’s part of me now.’

‘When you were thirteen,’ Babs repeated ruminatively. ‘You’re certain?’

‘Day after my birthday. You don’t tend to forget a present like that.’ Her brow crinkled. ‘Why, is it significant?’

‘It depends. Had you started your menses?’

‘Now, wait a minute!’ Peter jumped to his feet. Things were getting out beyond a joke. But Ellisha put out a restraining hand. She seemed fascinated. A mongoose caught in the thrall of a python. Or perhaps, he thought uneasily, a pythoness.

‘I’d started the week before. It was kind of a big deal because I was first out of my friends.’

‘I see. I see. A moment of transition. A rite of passage. Mutatis Mutandis if you will. Plenty of resonances in the mythic scheme of things. Lightning is divine. It purifies. Herakles, Asclepius, Semele were all struck by holy fire before they were deemed worthy of heroic status. The Incas laid out child sacrifices on mountain peaks to be struck by lightning because they thought it made them divine. All are mortal before the touch of the celestial.’ She took a long meditative sip from her cup. ‘The gods singled you out.’

Ellisha laughed. ‘I don’t believe in the gods.’

‘Immaterial if they happen to believe in you. But, of course, I use the term figuratively. Gods is just a word for opening up the dark places in consciousness. Mythology, that’s the key to everything. Ignis Dei.’ She rounded, without warning, on her students. ‘Ignis Dei. No idea what that means, eh?’

Her smugness was irritating. Feeling side-lined, Peter racked his brains for a pithy putdown. But his schoolboy Latin wasn’t up to the task. Dei, something to do with God. But Ignis? Ignorant? Ignoble? Ignominious? Nothing quite fit.

‘The spark of God maybe?’

Ellisha had spoken softly, so softly that Peter wasn’t sure she had spoken at all, but Zach slapped his hand on the desk. ‘Of course. I was thinking fire. But ignis in the sense of ignite.’

Babs sat upright, the reanimated corpse in a horror movie. She glanced narrowly at Ellisha, her face a peculiar mixture of anger and fear. ‘Who told you? You didn’t get that on your own.’

Ellisha laughed gracefully. ‘Why is it no-one believes that Americans can know Latin?’

For a tense instant, things might have gone either way, but then Babs recovered herself. She turned back to her students, swerving off in a new direction. ‘Religion has had millennia to create a satisfying system of belief. Yet the best the great theological minds of the world have come up with so far is God loves us, which is, of course, in patent contradiction to everything the universe is telling us. So, what’s missing? What do we really need?’

‘More sex,’ Zach suggested.

‘A man’s answer.’

He came back with, ‘No more discrimination. If we all learned to see each other as equals there might finally be peace in the world.’

‘Terrible idea,’ Babs snorted. ‘The purpose of religion is to make people feel special, unique, chosen by God. Without discrimination there is nothing to separate the elect from the herd. Humans will forgive their fellows all sorts of sins; theft, war, destruction. But not the sin of equality. It stifles us. Petrifies us. Not in the sense of filling us with fear, but the old use of the word. Same root as stone-man here. Petra, Latin for rock or crag. Literally to turn to stone, to be inert, paralysed.’

‘We need a better story.’ Suddenly all eyes were on Peter, and he looked at Babs defiantly.

‘Ah, our stone-man has it.’

‘What do you mean, Peter?’ Ellisha asked.

What did he mean? For an instant intuition had flashed inside his head, brilliant, blinding. But now it was gone. He stumbled over his tongue, trying to mould the heavy clods of words into a recognisable shape. ‘A religion needs to tell a story, to … to appeal to some forgotten longing buried deep down in the subconscious.’ It was hopeless. He was using clay to depict light, but Babs was pleased.

‘That’s it, Stone-man.’ She gave a rasping, smoker’s laugh. ‘Humanity loves a story. Give men philosophy and they’ll learn to think. Give them a compelling mythology and they’ll change the course of the stars. Forget sex. Narrative’s the real generative force guiding mankind. It wasn’t a foetus the Angel of the Lord deposited in Mary’s womb. It was a legend. Fons sapientiae, verbum Dei, as they say.’ She rolled an eye towards Peter. ‘Get your wife to translate that one.’ She began to cough, a deep, dragging sound, like the sound of the tide draining over gravel. The coughing went on and on. She banged on her chest with her fist several times to no obvious effect. Ellisha jumped to her feet. ‘I’ll get water.’

Babs swatted a hand at the air to indicate that it wasn’t necessary, but Ellisha had already gone. Peter watched, half in horror, half in fascination until the spasm wore itself out and Babs relaxed.

‘Fine now. Just something caught at the back of my throat.’

Peter nodded. From the corner of his eye, he noted that the students were trying surreptitiously to clear away their things. Babs noticed it too. ‘Yes, yes. Run along, children. You are in grave danger of having a thought enter your heads.’ She was pouring herself another drink from the flask. Suddenly she slammed the cup down, sending a little tsunami of liquid across the desk. ‘Don’t think I don’t know what they ask you. What’s the old witch up to, eh? What’s she cooking up behind closed doors? Ignis Dei. That’s what they want to know. Ignis Dei! But the old witch won’t tell.’

The students gave a last frightened glance at their mentor then fled the room. Babs looked into the dregs of her cup then said in a softer voice. ‘Old witch, one of their kinder nicknames for me.’

 

American Goddess by L. M. Affrossman is published by Sparsile Books, priced £10.99.

And if you can’t get enough of Tam o’ Shanter-inspired children’s books, we have another adventure hot on the heels of Victoria Williamson’s Hag Storm. Garry Stewart’s The Shanter Legacy has his protagonists Fin and Fiona swept into a magical, mystical world on a quest to find Meg the mare’s grey tail. Are they a match for the fearsome druid, Morbidea? You’ll have to get a copy to find out! But first, enjoy this extract, as Fin and Fiona are introduced to what’s in store for them . . .

 

Extract taken from The Shanter Legacy
By Garry Stewart
Published by Tippermuir Books

 

31 october 1804 — start of the strangest day

 

Once downstairs, steaming bowls of porridge and cups of warm milk awaited the children. The fire blazed in the hearth as Finn’s wooden spoon scraped the last morsel from his bowl. He always finished first.

‘Mum,’ he asked ‘will you count my freckles later? I think I’ve got a new one.’

‘I’ll count them tonight at bedtime but I haven’t noticed any new ones.’

‘It’s not fair. I hate having freckles.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t. Freckles are faerie kisses, kisses they only give to the bonniest of babies. They’ll bring you luck.’

‘You are just saying that to make me feel better.’

Fiona was waiting impatiently for the freckle talk to stop. She wanted to ask her mother something much more important.

‘Mum, Tilly Tulloch’s granny says this is the worst winter that anyone can remember.’

Fiona’s statement was calculated to bring her mother out of herself. Kate had seemed preoccupied lately.

‘Is that so?’ Kate stirred the large pot over the fire without looking up.

‘Aye, and she says it’ll get worse. She was talking to big smiddy Jock and he said that the Earth would get as hard as iron, harder than the shoes he was putting on the minister’s cuddy.’

Kate swung the pot around the griddle away from the direct heat of the fire and joined the children at the table. Smiling, she smoothed her apron and tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear.

‘Granny Tulloch’s imagination is famous in these parts. She never could put plain words to things.’

Fiona pressed on despite her mother’s attempts to avoid the subject. ‘She said there was weirdrie in the way the weather had turned.’

‘If there’s weirdrie in anything it’s in Granny Tulloch’s head,’ said Finn. His interruption was intended to be humorous but it was too close to cheek for his mother to let it pass.

‘Finn, if you can’t speak well of your elders then it is best to say nothing at all.’

‘I didn’t mean anything by it mother, it was just a wee joke.’ Finn loved practical jokes and sometimes his love of fun meant he carried things too far.

Fiona was angry that his attempt at humour had stopped her questioning her mother and blurted out, ‘Granny Tulloch said the weirdrie in it was our father’s fault. She said he spoiled the witches’ dance.’

Kate’s voice was firm as she held Fiona’s gaze with determined hazel eyes. ‘That’s enough Fiona, we’ll not have old wives clishmaclash at this table.’

But Fiona was not to be put off. She could tell from her mother’s tone that she was on the right track. ‘She said the weather had been dreadful on the seventh solstice and that the fourteenth would see the powers of the dark triumph over good. She said it was our father’s fault.’

‘That’ll do, Fiona.’

‘No, it will not do, Mother.’ Fiona’s anger and frustration had caused her to top her mother vocally and all three were stunned into silence. Finn sat gawping, looking from one to the other. He’d never heard Fiona speak like that to their mother.

Kate repeated herself quietly. ‘I said that will do. Your father was a good man, Fiona. We’ll not listen to superstitious rumours about him.’

‘Mother, what’s going on? Everything’s different. You’re different. The neighbours whisper when they see us in the town; the weather is scary. Something unnatural is happening and everyone thinks it’s to do with us.’

Finn was not at all sure about what was going on. He’d not noticed anything unusual apart from the weather being exceptionally bad and Fiona being a bit odd. But she was a girl and an older sister at that. Girls were always behaving in odd ways. All the same, he was beginning to feel a bit uneasy.

‘Is Fiona alright, Mum? Has she maybe banged her head? Should I get a poultice in case her brain melts through her ears?’

Rising from the table Kate crossed to the fire and gracefully lowered herself into the armchair. She motioned the children to come and sit on the floor at her feet. Fiona felt the excitement rise inside her. Her mother never sat at the fire after breakfast, there was always too much work to be done. They were always given a list of chores to be tackled right away. Even Finn realised that this day was already beginning to be very different from any he could remember. The children settled on the warm hearthstone and listened eagerly.

‘Fourteen years ago,’ Kate began, ‘when you were just a baby, Fiona, your father disturbed a coven of witches gathered at Alloway Kirkyard. When the witches spotted your father they chased after him. He rode Meg as fast as she could gallop but the witches caught up with them as he and Meg approached the bridge over the River Doon. You see, witches cannot cross running water. Just as your father raced across the keystone of the bridge one of the witches reached out and caught Meg by the tail ripping it clean off, leaving poor Meg badly wounded.’

‘That’s my nightmare,’ Fiona knelt up gripping her mother’s skirt. ‘I dream it every night.’

‘Your nightmare is real, Fiona.’

‘But I never find out what happens next. I wake up just as the witch rips Meg’s tail off. How does the nightmare end?’

‘It hasn’t ended, Fiona. The worst is still to come.’

‘So where is Meg’s tail now?’ asked Finn.

‘They say it was taken to a dark and evil land called Dracadonia where it was presented to a Druid queen, the beautiful but deadly Morbidea. A powerful and potent magic was bestowed upon the tail. Tonight, the night of the Samhain, Morbidea will absorb that magic and use it as the key to a mystical portal, the Yett of Abandoned Time, allowing her armies to flood through the portal wreaking vengeance and destruction upon our world.’

‘Tonight?’ gasped Finn, fear showing in his eyes. ‘This will happen tonight?’ Finn searched his mother’s face for some kind of reassurance but Kate could only nod in response to his question as she stared into the crackling flames of the fire.

‘Why do they want to attack our world? What have we ever done to them?’ asked Fiona.

‘Many thousands of years ago Morbidea’s ancestors were part of the elite Druids who ruled the ancient Celtic world. They revered and worshipped Mother Nature. One however, by the name of Morrigan, turned her back on those beliefs and began to learn the secrets of a dark and evil magic. Her followers became known as the Dark Druids. Mannan, the king of the Celts banished her and those who followed her to the underworld. Morrigan’s descendants have searched for ways back, intent on erasing all history of the elite Druids, destroying their stone circles and sacred mounds, eradicating the land and people of their memory for ever. Morrigan is long dead but it is said her descendant, Morbidea, now has the power to open that portal and lead her armies in a war of revenge.’

‘Can’t anyone stop her?’ Fiona asked. ‘There must be a way.’

‘Our world is about to change, my dears. We will have to survive as best we can.’ Kate stood and smoothed her apron as Kirsty lifted her head in anticipation. ‘Now we have work to do and we are far enough behind as it is. We’ll talk again tonight. Don’t worry. I have a plan that will keep you both safe.’

 

The Shanter Legacy by Garry Stewart is published by Tippermuir Books, priced £8.99.

When William McIlvanney, one of the crime writing greats, passed away in 2015, he left a handwritten manuscript of the infamous Laidlaw’s first case. Years later, Ian Rankin is back to finish what McIlvanney started – two iconic authors bringing to life the criminal world of 1970s Glasgow, and Laidlaw’s relentless quest for truth. David Robinson reviews.

 

The Dark Remains
By William McIlvanney and Ian Rankin
Published by Canongate

In Val McDermid’s new novel 1979, set in Glasgow in that year, there’s a moment when her journalist protagonist remembers the first time she read William McIlvanney’s Laidlaw. ‘It was set in a working-class Glasgow she recognised immediately,’ she notes. ‘She was intrigued by the quality of the prose, which was an uncommon feature in the detective stories she’d previously read.’

This is one of those moment when fiction hovers close to autobiography, because in 1977, when Laidlaw came out, McDermid was a 22-year-old reporter working on the Daily Record. She bought a copy and had a similar epiphany.  ‘From its opening chapter,’ she has written, ‘I’d never read a crime novel like this. Patricia Highsmith had taken us into the heads of killers; Ruth Rendell had explored sexuality; Alexander McArthur had exposed Glasgow to the world; Raymond Chandler had dressed the darkness in clever words. But nobody had ever smashed those elements together in so accomplished a synthesis.’

It’s this shock of Laidlaw’s newness, back in 1977, that we should keep in mind. To recapture its  freshness, try unimagining 27 seasons of Taggart and the entire output of the Glasgow Branch of the Tartan Noir Writers’ Union. The debt to McIvanney isn’t any smaller at the other end of the M8. In 1985, for example, Ian Rankin – just 25 and still with no published book to his name – tentatively approached McIlvanney at the Edinburgh book festival, and told him that he was working on a crime novel ‘that’s a bit like Laidlaw, but set in Edinburgh’. ‘Good luck with the Edinburgh Laidlaw’ McIlvanney wrote in Rankin’s copy.

With The Dark Remains, in which Rankin has completed a half-written manuscript McIlvanney left behind when he died in 2015, he has repaid any lingering literary debt in full. McIlvanney fans will want to read it, and so will Rankin’s own worldwide army of followers: I fully expect it to be  bobbing at or near the top of the hardback fiction bestseller charts for months on end. Yet because the two writers are so distinct, I can understand anyone feeling a certain degree of apprehension too: yes, this could easily be a book in which Rankin’s virtuosity with plot enhances McIlvanney’s visceral characterisation. But what if becomes a Rankin novel not a McIlvanney one, or if Rankin is too respectful of Jack Laidlaw’s occasional offkey speechifying and leaves things that should have been lost in the edit?  And while the prospect of a joint Rankin/McIvanney novel would make any crime fan salivate, couldn’t it just as easily be a charade, one song to the tune of another, an inharmonious hybrid pleasing no-one?

Well, yes it could, but no it isn’t. Because although Rankin has gone on to become Britain’s pre-eminent crime writer, he didn’t start off with that aim in mind – far from it: when Noughts & Crosses came out in 1987, he would surreptitiously switch bookshop copies from the ‘crime’ to the ‘fiction’ sections.  McIlvanney would have understood: when he wrote Laidlaw years earlier, he too had been adamant that this didn’t mean that he’d become a crime writer. Both men started writing about a detective in their city for the same reason – when it comes to getting an all-encompassing, top-to-bottom view of the place, who is better  than a gruff, unfooled, CID officer?

Given Rankin’s respect for McIlvanney, it’s no surprise that he hasn’t made too many changes to Laidlaw’s world.  The main one is McIlvanney’s – this is a prequel, set in 1972, when Laidlaw is still a detective constable, and after the first-person experiment of Strange Loyalties, we’re back with third-person narration. But everything about DC Laidlaw’s modus operandi appears to be the same, even when it seems frankly batty, like catching buses around Glasgow rather than learning to drive and practically living in a city centre hotel while on a case rather than heading back home to Graithnock (to what is, admittedly a stale marriage even then).

The rest of the setup is also recognisable. John Rhodes is still the vaguely moral gang boss of Calton, the cops still drink in The Top Spot, DI Milligan is still spectacularly dim-witted, Laidlaw still drinks Antiquary and lugs around copies of Unamuno, Kierkegaard and Camus (though, we are told, the real reason is that he wants to bamboozle his colleagues). The bigger background picture – the sectarianism that rips through families, that makes fathers doubt daughters if there’s ever a hint of them even flirting across the great divide – is omnipresent, and written into the tiniest details.

Then there’s the violence. We forget how ubiquitous it was in the early Seventies Glasgow. In his recent autobiography, The Accidental Footballer, Pat Nevin recalls playing in an under-12s side in Easterhouse, when play was stopped by two gangs clashing on the pitch and about 50 gangsters wielding swords, baseball bats and (for some reason) cricket bats. ‘They fought their way from one side of the pitch to the other, and when they’d gone, the referee blew his whistle and play restarted as if nothing had happened.’ In No Mean City, no big deal.

Here, as well as teen gangs such as the Gorbals Cumbie, are the even more violent adult variety. Glasgow is divided between three of them, and as The Dark Remains opens, one gang has had its consigliere murdered. His body has been dumped in a back alley on a rival’s patch. Is this something to do with his ex-girlfriend or entirely to do with gangs? Is the placing of the body a declaration of war by the most obvious gang rival or an attempt by the third gang leader to divide and rule? All these possibilities are equally balanced, but the novel looks at another hard-to-guage future too. Suppose you were a gangster in the weakened gang, would you sense an opportunity in the consigliere’s death or start to suspect your fellow gang members of cutting deals with the stronger gang?

This part of the plot is drum-tight, certainly more than any of the three Laidlaw novels. It pushes forwards more insistently than I remember a McIlvanney novel doing, where there always seemed to be time to spend a page lovingly describing an incidental and maybe even irrelevant character, like Fast Frankie’s dying mother in Strange Loyalties or the small man in a boiler suit (not even named) in a printing works who gossips about his boss’s sexual shenanigans and saunters irresistibly off page 148 in Canongate’s new edition of Laidlaw. Personally, I never read McIlvanney for plot (everything else, yes), so it’s slightly unexpected to come across one here, like finding a reconditioned engine in a much-loved car.

Let’s zoom in on those two gangsters I mentioned earlier. Just as the central characters in Docherty and The Big Man are partly admired for being good with their fists, so are the gangsters in The Dark Remains. When they walk Glasgow’s mean streets, the citizenry know better than to get in their way. Mickey and Spanner are doing just that on page 220, and because of the plot’s fancy footwork, the reader knows that neither of them has the slightest inkling about whether or not to trust the other. The tension between them is exquisite: it’s a scene so balanced that if this book ever gets made into a film, it will get the full treatment, with all of the dialogue going in as written.  Let’s look at how Rankin/McIlvanney describes the scene:

‘They were passing a knot of middle-aged men, caps fixed tightly to heads, collars up. There were greetings, the intoning of ‘Mickey’ and ‘Spanner’. It felt almost liturgical, these men hungry for a blessing, receiving at best a nodded acknowledgement of their existence.’

Who wrote that? Rankin? It would fit my notion that he’s the man behind the tighter plotting and it does come quite late on in the book, which could well be another indication. But that respect for the Big Man, violent enforcer of sometimes oddly moral codes? Well, that could be McIlvanney’s description of gangster John Rhodes in Laidlaw: ‘The man looked big and strong [but] what impressed him was the stillness. He didn’t fidget under the stare.’ I really can’t tell. Can you?

The Dark Remains by William McIlvanney and Ian Rankin is published by Canongate this month, priced £20. Canongate is also bringing out new editions of McIlvanney’s novels Laidlaw, The Papers of Tony Veitch and Strange Loyalties, priced £8.99 each.

A leading showcase of the country’s brightest writing talent, the new collection of New Writing Scotland showcases a brilliant breadth of contemporary literature from dozens of authors – some well established, some just starting out, all worth reading. Here are a few new treats for you to dive into.

Break in Case of Silence: New Writing Scotland
Edited by Rachelle Atalla and Marjorie Lotfi with Gaelic editor Maggie Rabatski
Published by ASLS

 

 

Robbie MacLeòid
GUN BHREITH

a nighean, mo nighean,
bha thu gu bhith nighean
d’ athar. sheallainn ort
a’ turraman mun cuairt
ruadhag am measg guirmead
an fheòir, làmhan beaga
a’ greimeachadh air stocan nam flùr,
fo sgàil na craoibhe malpais.
annas sgàrlaid thu.

faileas do chasan air mo dhà ghualainn
a’ teannachadh, is tu a’ sealltainn
bho àirde fuamhaire

a’ gàireachdainn
sunnd saor, solas buidhe
na grèine, gruag
ruadh, air neo,
’s dòcha nach biodh,

is gàire, gàire
do mhàthar,
carach, glacadh
mo chridhe. cha bhithinn
air dhìochuimhneachadh.

bha mi ’g obair air d’ òran-tàlaidh
ach uaireannan falbhaidh nithean leis an t-sruth.

 

UNBORN

you were (to be) a daddy’s girl.
I’d watch you teeter along –
little taller than the grass
– wee hands on the dandelions
and the maple tree.
a bright red anomaly.

ghost of your legs on my shoulders,
clung on tight, looking out
from a giant’s height.

giggling mirth
yellow sunshine
little redhead
(or not).

just a smile,
your mam’s half-smirk.
it was (to be)
never forgotten,
unlost.

I’ve been working on your lullaby
but sometimes these things slip away.

 

***

Joshua Lander
THIS IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL LOVE LETTER EVER WRITTEN

It’s gotta have a sick line about love. Something really deep. No roses or chocolates or anything like that. Maybe go down the Carol Ann Duffy road and whip out a vegetable? Not an onion, obviously, Duffy’s got dibs on that, but something as symbolically weighty. Avoid the phallic stuff, tho. No carrots or parsnips. You don’t wanna start making comparisons. Maybe a potato? Yeah, a potato – that works, because you gotta peel those layers off to get to the really good stuff . . . and then douse it in water to get rid of the starch, and that – maybe that – could be like the metaphor for her breaking it off with me, ya know? So there we go: we’ve got a potato on the cards and it’s beautiful, right? Maybe you could say something like she’s gotta bake me in her oven? Maybe not. Maybe something else. Come back to this.

Remember, you’re funny. Like real, real, funny. So, make her laugh. Not at you, though. Don’t, for example, tell her about the time you brought a raw egg into your viva and how it broke in your jacket and dripped onto the table which made it look like you’d come on the desk. Don’t tell her that. Don’t tell her about how you passed your viva but felt so incredibly depressed after you convinced yourself six months later that you hadn’t really passed because it was only on a single author and your internal clearly hated the project so much you know in your heart of hearts it wasn’t actually a real pass and you don’t deserve to have a PhD. Don’t tell her any of that. Talk about how you’re an academic now. A Doctor. Doctor Silverman, PhD in Literature, Theology, and the Arts. That sounds good. That sounds powerful and impressive. Never mind the abandoned book. Never mind the failed career in academia. You don’t need to talk about that. Tell her a joke. Keep it light and casual and breezy. Extra, extra, breezy.

The key thing here is to be cool. Coolness is how you win her affection. You were cool when you met her. Remember when you met her? God, you were happy. For years, you had thrush coming out your ass: red, raw, itchy thrush and then one day you went and got happy and POOOOF – it disappeared. And you were walking thrush-free like a normal person. You were swaggering happily along without having to stick a sneaky finger up your bum to settle the scratch down. You walked for hours and hours, showboating your bum’s ability to not burst into flames. Then you and her matched on Tinder and you were really clever and cool and funny because you could walk for hours without
scratching your bum; you felt confident and capable and when she asked you, super casual like, if you wanted to go back to hers, you did so nonchalantly, as though you weren’t at all fazed that this woman was asking you back to her place, even though you and her both knew what that meant: sex – holy fucking shitballs, S–E–X. And best of all, because your asshole wasn’t itchy and sore and red you went and had good sex; it wasn’t like the mind-blowing sex you would go on to have later, because, well, let’s not get carried away here, but it was good with an emphasis on the ooooooo. Remember that when you write this letter; it’s key to show her that you’ve still got it. You’re still that guy. You can still have sex. You don’t cry after masturbating. Fuck no, that’s not you. That’s not your style. You’re still the guy from way back when. So make sure to tell her all that.

But don’t make it nostalgic. You’re not doing this because you are hankering for the days of yore or anything like that. You’re all about being present. You’re into mindfulness, these days. You’re Captain Chill. You smoke weed now. You even buy your own stuff and have your own dealer. You meditate and do yoga. You’re the new and improved You. Sure, you’ve started eating meat again, but don’t tell her that. Just pretend you don’t, and we’ll deal with it after. Maybe tell her you’re going to be a teacher now. Will she like that? Maybe . . . Teachers are kind of straightlaced and dull, though. Maybe tell her you’re only gonna be a teacher until you get that book deal. That it’s just a means to an
end. You’re gonna be a writer. She’ll fucking love that. Who doesn’t love a writer? Especially a writer like you. Tell her about the novel you’re working on. Be sure to mention it’s on the Holocaust. She’ll be impressed by that. She’ll like that you’re exploring your history. She’ll think you’re deep and serious and stuff.

Be poetic, too. But don’t be clichéd. You don’t just read Mary Oliver anymore. Sure, by all means, mention her casually. She’s her favourite poet, so it’s worth slipping her into the conversation. But be really subtle about it. You don’t continuously listen to readings of ‘Wild Geese’ and ‘The Journey’ and cry in the shower. No, of course not. Nor, whilst we’re on the subject of crying, do you still watch the birthday video she made for you on YouTube. Those Russian bots, I reckon, are responsible for all those views. You read other poets now. Make sure to name a Black poet or two. She’ll be impressed by how woke you are. But don’t, for fuck sakes, say you’re woke. Nobody woke ever calls themselves woke; that would make them virtue signallers, tokenistic gesturers. You know, phoneys. And you’re not a phoney. You’re real and
serious. Deadly serious. Tell her when you get a salary you’re gonna donate money to BLM. Maybe to Palestine, too. Maybe both, you haven’t decided. Tell her how hard it is to think about what charities deserve your money most. She’ll recognise how charitable you are, and she’ll remember how concerned and caring you have always been.

Maybe don’t tell her you listen to Bukowski after every wank. That’s a bit weird, that. Do other men listen to poetry after they’ve masturbated? I hope so. Maybe ask the therapist. Oh, remind her that you see a therapist. She’ll remember how reflective you are.
You’re always willing to have a big old chat about your feelings because you’re always doing that anyway. You’re a writer, after all, and a writer is all about expression and feeling. You’ve got a beautiful inside, especially now that the thrush has cleared up. What else? Nature. She fucking loved nature. She loved the trees and the leaves and the branches and the birds and all that stuff. So make sure to mention that. Tell her how you listen to the sound of the wind and stand and stare at the petals of the flowers. Maybe mention how you have thought about posting flowers on Instagram but chickened out because you didn’t want to seem contrived. Tell her that you love being outdoors because of how pure it all is. You feel all peaceful and serene when you’re around the sea. You love watching birds fly, even pigeons, and you adore the sound of the seagulls squawking in the early hours of the morning. God, she’ll read this, and she’ll remember: she’ll remember how layered you are. Like an onion, amirite, Carol?

Don’t forget to mention your spiritual turn. I mean it’s all well and good being an atheist because organised religion is so obviously corrupt and wicked – definitely use ‘wicked’ here – but you’ve come to realise, after spending so much time outside of the city, that there’s something real here in the world, and the only word you can muster for it is spiritual. And you don’t know exactly what it means, and she’ll think that’s fantastic, too, because precision isn’t sexy. Factuality isn’t what anyone wants. No, it’s gushing, vivacious pontification! You, the eternal philosopher, are always lost in thought, running around with yet another idea regarding the meaning of life, a theorem that is beyond any words or formulas. It can’t be explained, because words inevitably fail your extraordinary ideas.

Tell her all that. Remind her of just how beautiful a mind you have. Who could possibly resist such an extraordinary letter? It’s perfect. She’ll read this and realise what a huge, huge mistake she’s made. She’ll call you straight away. No WhatsApp or Facebook. Straight on the phone. I’m sorry, she’ll cry, I never knew! I never knew! And you’ll be so chill about it. You’ll slowly rise up off the bench press, where you’ve just finished yet another PR, and you’ll tell her it’s okay, you still love her, and you’re ready to try again. And she’ll be so grateful. And you’ll move out there to be with her. And you’ll both live happily ever after. Just as soon as she reads this and realises: This is the Most Beautiful Love Letter Ever Written.

 

***

Wendy Miller
SKIMMIN STANES WI MA WEE BRITHER

geed up tryin ah says, whitz the point
o these mark-missin dayz? wur aw scunnert.
But then you says tay me Backspin. Frisbee.
N ah felt a strange sense o epiphany
Loch Doon turnt roon n winkt at me
your words drappt like beats intay this treacle sea
harsh deep or shalla sweet it flows richt thru us baith.

So ah picked oot the best kinni stane
wee, oval n flat, fit fur the croassin, ken
ye showed me hoo tay lean in nice n low
(level wi a loach but staun up tay a sea)
by this time, ma stane wiz perched in the porch
atween thumb n forefingur
Don’t Overthink It, ye sayz
Backspin. Flick. N lit go

when ah lit go ah felt aw ma failures take aff
fay ma fingurtipz fur the first time
ah’d harbuurt thum fur years
inside fists o fear. Well-nae-mare.
We baith stood back n held oor breath
watched as ah struck stane gold, conductin
four brass-bold skims, (doot doot doo doo)
n then. A fifth wan landit oan your lips
settlet intay a smile that could launch ships

ah did it

ah did it

ah did it

ah did it

AH DID IT

Break in Case of Silence: New Writing Scotland is published by ASLS, price £9.95  

 

Second in Peterson’s series circling the village of Duncul, Eamon’s newfound happiness is shattered by the kind of murder governments don’t want to believe happen anymore – something worse than a body has been found in its waters, and the TV crews are incoming. Read an excerpt below.

 

The Purified
By C.F. Peterson
Published by Scotland Street Press

 

Prologue 

On the hill above the village the thin figure moved in the dark, capturing light. From the shadows of the pines he could see into thirty windows. He felt safe up here, armed with a long lens. They were all in their boxes, beneath him. Some drew him in more than others. Mhairi Macintosh in her bedroom, for one. But there was not only that. There was Freda Macrae, an old woman, sitting an armchair in front of a television, with her eyes closed, slowly dying. Tom Blackett, in high-waisted trousers tight around his belly, watching soup boil. The Camerons; the mother with dark hair and a sphinx smile, playing board games and drawing with her children; the father in his shed, spinning bowls and candlesticks from his lathe. There was a Macdonald child on his stomach in a bare room in Tarr Bow, eyes inches from an iPad. All there, all safe, all his. Apart from the ones at the manse. They did not make sense. They were flies in the ointment. They were men that were not men. They had no routine, and would not stay in their box. They were strangers, and they crept about, by day and night, stealing things. He had to get closer, into the trees behind the manse, to see through their window. Tonight he was going down there to watch, knowing he would see things that should not be. He was going to catch their light, and put it in a box.  

Malky had been hearing stories about ‘The Chosen One’ for months and was prepared to be disappointed. When she took the bag of his head he saw that she was just a girl, as he had heard. She had a flat face and a turned-up nose and her blonde hair was matted into dreadlocks. The lips were slightly parted and the face thoughtful. She was wearing jeans and scruffy trainers and a baggy jumper with over-long arms that hid the shape of breasts and thighs. She wasn’t making any attempt at beauty, but something was shining from somewhere inside, brighter than the single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. The four young men with scarves over their faces who had tied him to the chair loomed behind her. She gestured to the tallest and he handed her a bolt-cutter. This was what she was known for; getting to the point. Her accent was a strange mixture of East London and German. 

‘If you really believe in something, you are prepared to die for it. These will help you decide if you are for us or them.’  

‘False dichotomy,’ said Malky in the accent of a lowland Scot. ‘I’m not for them or you. Maybe what I choose is just to keep things hidden.’  

‘I do not believe you. We have your map.’  

‘Maybe what I choose is silence.’  

‘That is not likely,’ she said. He smiled, but she did not.  

She moved behind him and he felt the cold of the cutter on his hands. He clenched his fists, but two men held his arms while a third stretched out one of the fingers. He felt the jaws tighten on the bone. He swallowed as she squeezed the handles with her girl-strength, which was enough. The wave of pain had the familiar effect of clearing his head. He breathed fast through the nose and bit blood from his lip, trying to stop the explosion from his lungs, but could not stop himself howling at the bare bulb. No, there was nothing disappointing about Brigitta Neilsen, he thought, as the darkness returned. 

 

 

Chapter 1 

It was the end of a hot June day in the Highlands and after a long and timid approach a soft, half-night had settled upon the hills and forests that surround the village of Duncul. Among the handful of streets and lanes the not-quite darkness skirmished with street-lights, warmth-filled windows and the cold flames of televisions, but recovered itself about the lawns of Duncul Castle at the edge of the village and beneath the avenue of beech and elm that lined the drive, raising strength for an assault upon the one light high up in the ancient sentinel, and upon the dim lamp that glowed outside a small cabin in the Ash Woods to the south. Beyond the door beneath the lamp Eamon Ansgar was looking at the broad back of his gardener, Mike Mack, who sat hunched before a potbellied stove. Eamon’s phone buzzed.  

‘The police are up at the manse,’ said Rona. ‘I thought you might want to know.’  

‘Thanks. I’ll be back soon,’ said Eamon. ‘Something up at the manse,’ he said to Mike. ‘Probably something to do with those boys. You were up there yourself lately. What’s the story?’  

‘A hollowed out sycamore at the back. Could fall on the house,’ Mike said to the stove. He seemed more taciturn than usual, if that was possible. At one point during the evening he had seemed on the verge of weeping.  

‘You don’t have to live here,’ said Eamon, looking around the one-room wooden hut that his gardener had built. He took in the smell of woodsmoke, the neat bed, the sagging armchair, the store of firewood, the gardening tools in the corner. It was a real man-cave. Perhaps that is why I like it, he thought. Like his brother Stevie’s caravan in the quarry on the other side of the village, it had become a refuge from the castle, which had become the domain of women and a child; Kirsty the housekeeper, his wife, her mother, and his infant son. He was being ousted by a six month old; the heir already taking over. ‘There’s a house in the village, a proper house, that you can have.’  

‘This suits me,’ said Mike.  

‘How is Finlay?’ said Eamon, getting round to the subject he had been avoiding for an hour. Finlay Mack, Mike’s brother, had been taken to the mental hospital in Aberdeen for the second time in a year.  

‘Not good,’ said Mike. Eamon waited but knew he would not say anything more. Mike Mack had never spoken much for the forty years he had known him. He needed companionship right now, but it would not come from conversation; it would come from silent, hard work. The way forward was not into the subject, but around and alongside it. He reminded himself to concentrate on the practical, the details of doing things.  

‘I’ve got to go. But tomorrow we can start chopping that beech. Is the chainsaw sharp?’  

‘Aye.’  

‘Have you put a new handle on the axe?’  

Mike nodded.  

Eamon walked back to the castle through last year’s crisp-dry beech leaves, entering the gardens by the door in the south wall and crossing the yellow lawn to the tower door. Perhaps Mike was still annoyed about not being allowed to water the lawn. They had plenty of water from the castle’s private supply, but after thirty days without rain the village had been warned of imminent mains rationing, and it didn’t seem fair to water a full acre. ‘Let it burn,’ Eamon had said. 

The Purified by C.L. Peterson is published by Scotland Street Press, price £9.99  

Asked by an acquaintance to investigate a curse on the Isle of Sonna, Leo Moran is drawn into a drama beyond anything he could have predicted. Have a listen to Charles E. McGarry reading from his new book below.

 

The Mystery of the Strange Piper
By Charles E McGarry
Published by Backpage Press

 

 

 

The Mystery of the Strange Piper by Charles E McGarry is published by Backpage Press, price £8.99

A debut taking the reader on a journey through dark literary fiction, through the twists of grief, regret, love and hope. “The past is never far behind,” reads the blurb. “If we do not leave it, if we insist on carrying it with us to the end… that end is a monster.” Read for yourself.

 

Extract from Men Playing Ghosts, Playing God,
from Look Where You Are Going, Not Where You Have Been
By Steven J Dines
Published by Luna Press Publishing

 

Men Playing Ghosts, Playing God

Age will not be defied
-Francis Bacon

Let me tell you about the time four old ghosts held death captive in a basement. Let me tell you what that power can do to a man and the sacrifice he will make for the gift of time. But first, let me tell you how we became ghosts in the first place.

At the age of seventy-seven, I, Henry Eddowes, died. Nobody seemed to notice, nobody seemed to care, which only made it harder for me coming to terms with my demise. Not my literal demise, you should understand, otherwise how would I be writing this account? But there are other ways to die, just as there are other ways to live. The name of the one who took my life away was Russell Hobbs. That’s right, it was one of his toasters that caused the fire, his defective workmanship; not me, not mine. All I wanted on that September evening of last year was to put my tired feet up, eat spaghetti and sausages on toast, and listen to a little Piano Sonata No.14 until I fell asleep. Contrary to what the fire inspector concluded I never turned the dial all the way to the darkest setting, and even if I had, which I cannot completely disclaim since I don’t have what you might call ‘one hundred percent recall’, the fool contraption still should not have flame-grilled the toast, the toast the kitchen window-blind, and so on.

Being old is worse than being a child. When a child sets fire to something, they get a ticking off or a slap on the wrist, but do the same thing at my age and the powers that be—and I am referring to my children here—are prepared to throw you in a padded cell.

Or worse.

They call Wintercroft a residential home. I call it the waiting room to Hell. The brochure boasts it is situated in four acres of landscaped gardens on the outskirts of the city. It does not, anywhere, use the phrase, ‘out of the way.’ But it is and we are.

And that is an altogether different kind of death.

 

*

 

When we first heard of Constance’ husband’s passing, it was one minute to midnight and we were playing cards. It was quiet, the lights were low, and everyone else had been fed and bedded, except the four of us with our special pass, paid for with sixty cigarettes and the assurance that we would keep it down. We were in Wintercroft’s communal room. Kensington chairs lined two of the walls, hand upholstered, red floral pattern on a backdrop of somnolent green. In time, our bones turn to straw; in time, our brains too. None of the residents were really capable of lying on the grass to look at the sky anymore, so that was as good as it got: a chair and a window. We were scarecrows, propped up and left to watch the black birds circling.

But the four of us—we had poker.

Forget Bridge and Canasta, we left those to the nonagenarians. We young ones in our seventies, Walshy, Bullamore, Sheldon, and myself, we enjoyed nothing more than a game of five card stud. All right, so we used onion rings instead of actual poker chips, and our table, a walnut coffee commandeered from the women’s corner, was a little on the low side, something our backs incessantly complained about afterward, but we could lose ourselves, really lose ourselves: in the cards, in our hand, in the game.

The scream changed that. One soul-torn scream from just along the corridor.

Her scream.

It changed everything.

Walshy looked at Bullamore then Sheldon; Bullamore at Sheldon then Walshy; Sheldon at Walshy then Bullamore. Then all three turned to look at me.

None of us needed to say anything: we all knew what it meant. We were all putting in our twilight time in Wintercroft, and darkness was never too far away.

‘So he’s gone,’ I said in a low voice, raising my coffee mug in the air. ‘To George.’

‘To George,’ the others echoed.

We touched the rims to our lips and drank to him, or rather we breathed deeply of the aroma lingering at the bottom of our near-empty cups.

And then we played another hand.

I forget who won it. Not me. My heart was no longer in the game. It was, with my mind, just along the corridor…with Constance.

 

*

 

It was no secret among the other residents that I was madly in love with her. There is no time for secrets when time is short. Even George had known my feelings, but he’d also understood that I was nothing if not honourable. I respected the sanctity of their marriage as much as I respected the sanctity of my own. A growing shortness of time on this earth does not make licentious wolves of us all.

But I do love her.

Before we ever met, on my first day in Wintercroft, I heard someone mention her name, and the jolt I felt as a result rattled my heart. I fell in love with her name before I met and fell for the woman herself. Constance. Constance. And when I learned of the others they fell one behind the next, like a trail of warm autumn petals across a slab of frozen ground: Constance Harriet Willington-Wright.

Petals, yes—or four elegant train carriages lighting up the walls of a darkened tunnel: me.

But I digress.

Back to what happened.

 

*

 

I could not visit Constance in her room that night. The staff would not allow it. So I spent the hours until morning pacing my room like some poor love-starved teenager. When I grew tired of pacing, I stretched myself out on the bed and traced the cracks in the ceiling, imagining that I was somehow clinging to a comet up in space, looking down upon the rivers of the Earth. It was a game I used to play as a boy while my parents argued in the next room, after someone told me there was no sound in space.

It isn’t true.

The words become lost in the great vacuum of time and distance but somehow the screams never seem to lose their power. If anything, they become comets themselves, orbiting the world right alongside you. The next morning I was a Jack-out-of-his-box, hurrying along the corridor to Constance’ room. I found her curled up on a large chair, a little girl in posture but an ancient woman in appearance. Who knew one night could last so long? Enough to add years to a woman’s face when years were the thing none of us really had.

I stood before her, trying not to block her view out of the window. She needed distance—if not the ability to distance herself then at least the ability to see something distant. A lone-standing tree. A car coming over a hill. The sun climbing the sky.

‘Four years ago, when my Mary died,’ I said, ‘the window became my best friend too.’

Constance’ eyes changed focus, narrowing in on the movement of my lips, a matter of feet and inches from her own. A pained expression flitted across her face before she turned her head slightly, back to the distance on the other side of the glass. It was like she had not recognised me.

‘I’m sorry about George,’ I said.

‘He was a good man,’ I said.

‘A loss to us all,’ I said.

And I meant it, every word.

Constance said nothing, only nodding in places. Whether it was in response to me or to some other conversation playing inside her head, I did not know. I only knew that I was completely alone in the room with her.

And that somehow I had to bring her back.

 

*

 

‘Eddowes—no. No! It’s madness.’

I opened the door to my room and hurried Sheldon inside, out of earshot of the other residents. The service wasn’t over by thirty minutes and we were both still dressed in our funeral attire, but it had been two days and Constance was slipping further and further away.

Sheldon had been the one to share my idea with first. He was a cautious soul; he only ever went in on a winning hand and never, never went for the bluff. He had the scars to prove it too: every one of his three wives had been unfaithful, leaving him for other, less cautious men. But, bless his heart, some people never change and some people never win at poker; it didn’t stop them anteing up.

‘I need to do this,’ I told him. ‘Something to stop the rot setting in.’

Sheldon loosened his black tie but left it on. ‘It’s an awful risk, Henry,’ he said. ‘If she finds out, if she catches you, she’ll never forgive you. And you’d be giving them grounds to throw you out of here. There are worse places than Wintercroft, you know.’

I could think of only one.

‘I can’t do this alone,’ I said. ‘Are you in or not?’

‘Christ, Henry, his ashes have hardly had a chance to cool and you’re talking about…well, let’s just say it, you’re talking about sneaking into his widow’s room and planting clues—’

‘They’re not clues,’ I corrected, trying to placate him. ‘This isn’t some treasure hunt. Try not to get over-excited. They’re messages. Simple but clear messages—from George to his wife.’

‘And what do you hope to achieve by doing this?’ he asked.

I had given the question a lot of thought, and it boiled down to a single grain of truth.

‘Time,’ I said.

‘With Constance?’ he asked, suspicious.

I nodded.

Sheldon shook his head. It was a cautious shake.

‘There are other, better ways to steal a man’s wife—widow or not.’

Before I could stop myself, I reached for the loose tie around his neck and yanked it up and around like a noose. A tiny puff of air escaped from his mouth and passed into my nostrils the sweet-sharp smell of peppermint on his breath. Reality struck me then, and I snapped out of my rage in an instant, letting go of his tie and backing off to stand next to the window. Sheldon fixed his tie, trying to maintain his composure as he struggled to catch his breath. Suddenly the room felt smaller, the walls pressing in like hands around a bug.

‘I’m not trying to steal anyone,’ I said. ‘I simply want a little more time with her, that’s all. More time. Do you understand?’

Sheldon nodded.

With three ex-wives, he understood better than anyone.

 

*

 

To sweeten the mood, later that evening I folded on a Three of a Kind and two Flushes. The other two saw through it right away. Sheldon was too quiet and I rarely, if ever, lost at cards. Walshy, ever the clown, got a kick out of just playing the game, good hand or not. Bullamore always went in too heavy and came out light.

‘You’re one sick old dog,’ Walshy said, once he’d heard my plan.

‘But I’m in. Just try and keep me out.’

Bullamore took a little more convincing. He huffed and puffed but in the end blew nothing down. ‘As long as no one finds out and no one gets hurt then I’m in too.’

And so four ghosts we became.

I should have been pleased, and I was, briefly—my plan to rescue Constance was in early motion. But my tired old skin went cold as I watched myself gather up all of the cards and shuffle them in readiness of the hand about to be played. The sun was sinking outside, pouring in through the windows of the communal room a kind of thin, jaundiced light. It clung to the backs of my hands, to all of our skins in fact, and made of us strange yellow men. Men who had no right to think of themselves as ghosts, who had no right to meddle furtively in the lives of another. Men, strange and yellow.

And before a card was dealt, my hands began to shake.

Look Where You Are Going, Not Where You Have Been by Steven J Dines is published by Luna Press Publishing, price £12.99

Sharon Bairden’s debut Sins of the Father follows Rebecca, who disconnects from the world around her as the past comes back to haunt her, secrets gradually unravelling. Sharon shares her favourite crime debuts for you to dive into.

 

Sins of the Father
By Sharon Bairden
Published by Red Dog Press

 

I started blogging over at Chapter in my Life six years ago as a place to keep my thoughts on the books I had read and loved. Then I discovered an online community of book lovers just like me, people who wanted to shout from the rooftops about the books they had enjoyed and so my life as bona fide book blogger began.

I’ve lost count of the number of books I have read over the years but I have picked five debut crime novels which have all left their mark on me. In no particular order:

First up is Dead Inside written by fellow blogger, Noelle Holten who has now gone on to write a total of five books featuring Detective Maggie Jamieson and each one just gets darker and more twisted. The author’s own background as a Senior Probation Officer and a survivor of domestic abuse brings a real authenticity to her characters. Dead Inside is a fantastic portrayal of domestic abuse and shatters the myth that abuse only happens to a certain section of society. It also addresses that whole issue of “why doesn’t she just leave” underlying the many reasons why people stay in abusive relationships.

Next I’m going to choose fellow Scottish author Lisa Gray and her debut, Thin Air, featuring Private Investigator, Jessica Shaw. Thin Air was possibly one of the most self-assured debut’s I’d read. Thin Air ticked all my boxes, characters, plot and sense of place all married together to provide an outstanding debut novel. The writing flows effortlessly, the storyline is unique and refreshing, it was a winner for me.

S.E Lynes is a writer who inspires me book after book, her writing is sublime and it gets under my skin every time. Her debut, Valentina, is one very close to my heart. I met the author, not long after the book was published and I remember her expressing a level of anxiety that I would be reading her book as a Scottish reader when she had created a Scottish character, she feared that she would have got the voice wrong. She could not have been any more wrong. She nailed her characterisation and in Valentina she explored relationships, trust and deceit and did so in a spine-tingling fashion; with a cast of characters whom I loved and hated in the same measure, this debut had me glued to the pages throughout.

Next on my list has to be Douglas Skelton, and although the book I am choosing isn’t the very first book he wrote, it was his first crime fiction novel. Douglas Skelton is a well known writer with a long backlist of non-fiction crime books to his name, with a background in Investigative Journalism and a penchant for all things dark, I am delighted that in 2013 he took the plunge into the world of fiction with the release of Blood City, featuring Davie McCall, a bad boy, with his own set of values and moral code. Davie McCall features up there in my top characters of all times and I’d urge everyone to read this series. The novel is set on the mean streets of Glasgow in the 1970s/80s and it immediately catapulted me back in time as the author brought the streets of Glasgow and their inhabitants alive.  It is a must read for lovers of Scottish Crime Fiction.

Last but not least is Random from Craig Robertson, another one of my go to Scottish Crime writers. Random blew my mind when I first read it, A serial killer is terrorising the streets of Glasgow leaving the police baffled, there seems to be no rhyme nor reason to the killings. This book is told from the killers perspective so from the outset you know who he is but not why. A dark and brutal tale of a man driven to the depths of despair, it firmly places the reader in a very dark place and it is not to be missed!

Thanks to the encouragement of the crime writing community, I finally bit the bullet and decided to write a book, something I’d always wanted to do, but never believed I could. Sins of the Father was published by Red Dog Press in November 2020.

Initially when I wrote the book, all I wanted to achieve was to start and finish writing a novel, I didn’t have any grand ideas that it would be published. A number of people in the business beta read it and suggested I work on it and submit it. It was at that point I really started to think about what I was trying to achieve other than fulfilling a dream. My main character in Sins of the Father is Rebecca Findlay, she is a troubled young woman and the reader soon discovers why this is the case. It is story about the impact of trauma and adverse system experiences. She is not always a likeable character and one that the reader may struggle to connect with at times, but her story, although fictional, is the story of vulnerable people being exploited and falling through the net of a system.

Sins of the Father by Sharon Bairden is published by Red Dog Press, price £8.99  

It’s Christmas day. Japan Cormac is heading for the hills. His bar is shut through the pandemic, his marriage disintegrating, a call from his doctor awaits. It’s the late 1980s in Tokyo. Eri documented the rise of a legendary female punk band. She now has to confront her past. Over 24 hours, everything they’ve been repressing comes to the fore. Read an excerpt below.

 

Life is Elsewhere, Burn Your Flags
By Iain Maloney
Published by Liminal Ink

 

Snow fell during the night, a sugar coating on the mountains. Frosted pine trees, an icy sheen on the clean, bright wood, yet even after the snow it’s all still dusty scrub. These hills – hills, not mountains, whatever the tourist info says – are never going to inspire any great poetry. No hermits ever retreated to these sandy bumps to live out their lives in quiet contemplation. Lives of quiet desperation. Not here.

These aren’t Mishima mountains where you can imagine the ill-fated world-rejected hero of a Mishima Yukio story coming to end it all, muscled torso exposed to the morning sun, a sharp blade – a meaningful blade, historical steel – cleansed and waiting, a suitable death poem on his lips. A romantic death. Meaningful death. Beautiful death.

You don’t get beautiful deaths anymore. Not in 2020. You get deaths behind closed doors. Death behind plastic sheeting and infection controls. Death by statistics. Death by policy. The plague times. The end of days. No beautiful deaths, alone in an isolation room, a voice through an intercom. We built hospitals so we could keep death from our doors. Clean, tidy, elsewhere.

Life is elsewhere. I am elsewhere. But this year death is everywhere. Death is here. On the way here I killed a snake. I saw it too late; a hosepipe stretched across the single-track road, just round the hairpin bend. My wheels were over it before I had time to register what I was seeing. Not even a dunt like in the movies, the sound of machine rolling over life, the jolt inside the car. Expensive suspension, thick tyres, a smooth ride. A shimahebi, harmless, but powerful, long. The head was moving, its back broken, flattened into the tarmac. I didn’t know what to do so I left it. Another ugly death, alone and broken. Why did the snake cross the road? To get to the other side. Shouldn’t go outside. Death is coming round every corner, silent.

I check my phone. Nothing. They said I’d get the results today. She’ll call herself, Dr Endo, to deliver the news, good news, bad news. Either way, there will be news today. April 18, 1930 there was no news on the BBC. Here’s some music instead. Music while you wait. Wait for the news. I looked on Wikipedia once about April 18, 1930. A typhoon made landfall in the Philippines, but that wasn’t news-worthy in Britain then. Or maybe they didn’t know. The news wasn’t news then, it was always already yesterday’s news. Yesterday, in the Philippines, a typhoon made landfall. We’ll tell you how many died tomorrow. Now here’s some music.

There’s a website that tracks the cases, the deaths. One page, two counters, scrolling round, scrolling up, and up, and up. News in an instant. Up and up. I don’t usually climb in silence but I can’t think of any sounds I want to hear. Nothing fits the mood but silence, the crump of my boots on the rocky path, the screech of those Chinese birds wintering here. Noisy, brightly coloured. Stereotypes abound in nature. There was one other car in the car park, a white Kei truck, a tiny pickup, almost like a toy. Some old guy fishing, his camping stove and a frying pan, a one-cup sake and the din of family safely out of earshot. No one else on the paths. I have to keep reminding myself it’s Christmas Day.

 

Back in Dublin, it’s still Christmas Eve. Saoirse will be wrestling the kids into bed, stockings over the – where do you hang stockings if you don’t have a fire? Off the bookcase? Stockings up, tree lights on, Santa on his way. A glass of wine, her and Gerry wrapping presents stashed on top of the wardrobe for a week at the most. Saoirse was always lastminute. Homework at school; ready for a date; driving me to the airport in March, the rush to get back to Japan before the borders closed. We only noticed as we came off the last roundabout that she still had her slippers on. You’re getting just like Ma, I said. Well don’t be telling Gerry that or he’ll be off after a younger model. Just the excuse he needs, she said. Problems there? I asked. Nothing castration wouldn’t solve, she said. And that’s where you leave it because there were bigger problems than whether Gerry had been at it.

Only just got home. Japan closed the borders in March and us lifers weren’t allowed back in until October and even then there were more hoops than at Celtic Park. Permanent residence. Contingent status. We’re here under sufferance. Thanks for the taxes but once we perfect the robots, you’ll not be needed. Right now entry to Japan is banned except for Japanese nationals. As if the virus checks your passport.

Eri picked me up, threw a mask at me, a bottle of hand gel, even though I already had both. Don’t tell anyone where you’ve been, she said. Don’t tell the neighbours you were in Europe. Should I wear a badge? I said. Tattoo something on my forehead?

She wasn’t laughing. She hasn’t laughed much recently. Not much to laugh about. Even schadenfreude took a hammering this year. Can’t laugh at the suffering of others when there’s so much of it about. Where to start? Schadenfreude, like charity, starts at home. Laugh at thyself, you fucker, if you want something to laugh at. Christmas Day and you’re on your own up in the hills. Not a present exchanged. Not even a merry or a happy. She was up late, locked in the spare room with her old boxes and that sake we got from Kochi, all of it. I could hear her snoring in there as I went downstairs and pulled my boots on.

Christmas really is fucking ridiculous when you think about it. Kids aside, of course. The niblings will be excited as anything for Santa and the works. Eighteen years in Japan and the word has lost all meaning. Grown-up adults decorating the house and putting on paper hats like they don’t all hate each other 364 days. I kick a rock and before I realise it’s gone over the edge and is tumbling down, gathering speed, gathering no moss. There’s a golf course down there somewhere. Good. A rock, like the Indiana Jones rock at the start of Raiders, battering through the twelfth green, knocking some old executive in a pink cap and one glove flying. A few Facebook Merry Christmases, a retweet of a retweet of a retweet. No news.

I stop and take a drink of water. It’s even colder than when it came out the tap. Or maybe I’m just hotter. It’s been a while since I got much above sea level. At the start of lockdown I did a bit, made myself get outside, but all the enthusiasm drained somewhere around June. Best intentions.

Every year Eri and I get in a couple of good hikes and every year one of us says, we should keep it up this year, get fitter. We should have a goal. Maybe Kiso-Komagatake in the summer. Camp on the plateau like we did back in the day. Under the stars. By February I couldn’t tell you whether the piping on my boots was red or yellow.

Shouldn’t have taken the car. It’s a faff with the trains but I hate retracing, going back. Makes the walk seem twice as long, half as interesting. Plus I could have a drink. A wee flask. A couple of cans. I know I shouldn’t but it’s Christmas. The Lord forgives a drink at Christmas. The Lord forgives but the body doesn’t. The doctors won’t.

Very, very cold water, water just above freezing, tastes of nothing, tastes of absence, tastes of the void. Swallow it inside me, swallow it down, taste the emptiness.

Hiking here is a recent import, 150 years or so. People climbed mountains, obviously, but mainly for religious reasons. Temples at the top, pilgrimages up the long and winding roads, barefoot, carrying a rock, devotional. Mental. No one did it for fun, as a hobby, as a way to fill the time while you’re waiting. Not until some mad westerners showed up with poles and tennis rackets and buggered off up these divine slopes for a laugh. They didn’t half embrace it, though, that mix of suffering and satisfaction potent, contagious and oh so human. Old women carrying enough equipment to restock basecamp for a forty-five minute round trip because you’ve gotta have the gear, and what’s a climb without a cup of ramen at the top? Without a wee flask?

on snow
so easy
to slip

I’ve always liked the haiku. It’s what brought me to Japan in the first place. Like most men I had a Beat phase. On The Road, wine and jazz, girls and drugs, cut up and the best minds. But I never had much concentration for reading. Kerouac’s haiku, that got me. That short sharp shock, the single moment, a story in a few words. Why does Tolstoy need so many when Bashō needs so few? Brevity is the soul of wit, said Shakespeare, so a haiku poet is wittier than a novelist. Joyce should’ve done Ulysses as a haiku.

On June 16^th
Bloom had a shite
Stephen had a drink
Molly had a ride
Yes, they did, yes.

Not really a haiku but there you go.

Life is Elsewhere, Burn Your Flags by Iain Maloney is published by Liminal Ink, price £6.99  

After the brutal murder of his son, gangland boss Zander Finn disappears – leaving everything behind. When Malky Maloney tracks him down, the stakes for his real and crime families couldn’t be greater. Denzil Meyrick discusses his latest book.

 

Terms of Restitution
By Denzil Meyrick
Published by Polygon

 

Congratulations Denzil on your latest book release! Could you tell us a little more about Terms of Restitution and what you wanted to explore in its writing?

Terms of Restitution is set between Paisley, London and rural Italy. It’s a gangster novel. Zander Finn, kingpin of Paisley crime, flees the town when his youngest son is gunned down in a brutal attack. He takes up a job driving a patient transport ambulance in London.

When his second in command Malky Maloney tracks him down, he realises he must return home to save both his domestic and criminal families from extinction at the hands of avaricious foreign gangs. Look out for thrilling action with a fair dollop of humour.

I was anxious to explore all sides of the bad guy, encompassing a life of crime through the lens of someone with the problems we all face.

 

You’ve left your beloved Kinloch for this book. What has it been like for you as a writer creating a new fictional world from the one you’re so familiar with?

I think many perceive that writing a long series is easier than conjuring up a one-off novel. In some ways that’s true. However, with a series like Daley, the writer must be careful with character arcs, back-stories, names of relatives friends, etc., etc. So, it can be quite an exacting business.

A completely new setting and characters can be quite liberating, though you are starting again, so to speak. I enjoyed the process.

 

You’ve also switched sides too, with your protagonist a criminal instead of a detective. Why did you want to write a story from a criminal’s point of view?

I think it’s always interesting to try something new – look at an alternative perspective. Zander Finn and Daley couldn’t be less alike.

But, as with the Daley novels, I write both the police officers and criminals. Same here with Terms of Restitution, though much more emphasis is placed on the bad guys. Even so, there are some strong characters from law enforcement, including Amelia Langley, the police officer tasked with bringing Finn to justice . . . but nothing is that simple.

 

It’s billed as a stand-alone thriller, but the reviews have been so positive. Are you tempted to revisit the Finn family?

It’s always nice to be in receipt of good reviews. Very pleasing in this case as it’s something completely new. I think it’s too early to say, but I wouldn’t rule anything out. So, the door hasn’t closed on the Finns yet. Who knows? I’ll be interested to hear what readers think.

 

What influences are behind this book? You’ve been writing crime fiction for a long time now; how do you stay motivated and excited about the genre’s potential?

I’ve always enjoyed gangster movies – some of the best in the business. Who can forget The Godfather, Goodfellows, Casino, etc.? But, as with Daley, The Sopranos TV show remains my primary inspiration. When you look at Brian Scott, for example, he isn’t a million miles away from Paulie Walnuts. Same goes for Zander Finn and Tony Soprano. That show has become the TV lockdown phenomenon, with younger people who didn’t catch it the first time round doing so via streaming services during the terrible Covid crisis. Though, however inspired, my characters are fresh and new, with hidden depths and secrets all of their own.

I think the crime fiction genre is perhaps too well served at the moment. The trick to achieving success, as with so many creative things, is to come up with something a wee bit off-kilter, different. I often think that’s why Daley became a success, and hope the same for Terms of Restitution. Keeping things fresh keeps readers and writers motivated, I think.

 

And you don’t stop! You have a 3^rd book coming out this year, another of the Hamish historical spin-offs, A Toast of Old Stones. Can you tell us what to expect from that?

Ah, good old Hamish. In the new novella A Toast to the Old Stones, we see the younger version of what is going to become the sage-like older character. Yet again, he’s mentored by Sandy Hoynes, skipper of the old tub The Girl Maggie, plying their trade in the late 60s.

This time we find our intrepid crew and some of the rest of Kinloch’s fishing community following tradition, off to celebrate the arrival of the Old New Year (12 January) by paying their obeisance to The Auld Stones.

It’s a tradition going back to the Viking age and beyond. But nothing is that simple for Hoynes and Hamish. True nostalgia with bags of humour – a perfect festive gift!

 

We can’t not mention DCI Daley too. Can you give us any hints on what’s next for him and the rest of the gang in present-day Kinloch?

Our brave detectives are about to embark on their tenth outing in the book entitled The Death of Remembrance.

We’ve read much about Daley’s back story via short stories and in the sixth novel The Relentless Tide. This time we discover more about Brian Scott’s early career in the police. Woven through a contemporary storyline with flashbacks, we see how Brian became who he is. Look out for some shocks and surprises, with the return of some old faces like John Donald and James Machie.

Meanwhile, in the present, Daley and Scott face an unexpected foe with links to the past, uniting the book’s themes.

As usual though, very little is as it seems.

 

Terms of Restitution by Denzil Meyrick is published by Polygon, price £12.99