Serpentine review in Highland News

...thanks again to Margaret Chrystal:

Serpentine

THERE’S a real thrill about seeing your own city turned into the setting for a violent life or death struggle.

It’s not an experience Invernessians have enjoyed too much to date.

But as the first of a planned series, Tom Morton’s thriller SERPENTINE (Mainstream, £9.99) sets the heart racing and the pages turning as dark deeds from Ireland’s Troubles resurface and bring secret lives bobbing to the surface on the streets of Inverness.

Mike Murricane – these days a well-paid but bored consultant mercenary in the Gaza Strip – is called in to help ex-lover and former colleague Millie Jones when their past in Northern Ireland brutally catches up with her quiet retirement.

Ruthless violence is on their trail. And somehow it all leads back to the mysterious Serpentine and a black operation from decades ago with the plot neatly twisting Ireland’s past and the present troubles of the Middle East into a hell-for-leather race for survival.

Murricane is a tough guy with a hatred of salmon farmers and a love of life’s finest gadgets, guns and motors, while Millie is a thorn in his side he can’t ignore. But also dragged into the affair is Northern Constabulary’s disgraced sergeant, Zander Flaws. Happily whiling away his time – when not having hot sex with a motorbike-riding pathologist – by quietly running his ‘department of lost causes’, he spends his time looking into the deaths of forgotten corpses. Until, that is, a horrific killing ties him into the race to track down Serpentine.

Impressive on music references – each chapter is named by a song title – and the everyday detail of real lives, the book has the trick of keeping the plot racing while finding enough time to flesh out the people who make the whole device tick. Each page has more than its fair share of black jokes and pithy one-liners, such as Millie getting her own back on an American colleague: "Always the American way, Clara. Neutral until it starts to put the price of petrol up."

And another boon is that there are plenty of useful, well-researched tips for would-be spies and assassins to pick up along the way.

You’ll never look at a razor blade or a cable tie the same again, after
Serpentine.

Or Inverness, for that matter.

So
Serpentine sets it in stone – the Highlands is the new dark heart of Scotland.

Just follow the satnav up the A9 for the Scottish thriller’s hottest new destination – a hotbed of teuchter noir. MC

Belladrum, Belladram, Drumnadrochit, wishing trees and back home

It must have been sweet revenge for Joe Gibbs and Rob Hicks to see Belladrum sell out this year, and, under mostly sunny skies, deliver the best atmosphere of any festival I've been to. Both the Outsider and connect Festivals owed - being charitable - a great deal to the Belladrum inspiration, yet both were essentially commercial operations organised by vastly expdrienced, highly efficient groups. And of course, both had to be cancelled in the face of financial worries.

Bella marches to a different drum. Joe's an old-style bohemian aristocrat, Rob is probably the most dynamic and yet grounded gig promoter I've come across. They are committed to the notion of a community festival that wears its hippy origins on its sleeve, covers all the angles from politics and literature to hard rock and great food, and is a safe, family-friendly environment. It's interesting that the headliners (Ocean Colour Scene, The Editors, Saw Doctors, Seth Lakeman) were in no way first-division festival draws, and yet still the event sold out - for the first time ever. People come for the festival, the bands are, in a sense, secondary. Though huge kudos to The Harlands, from Wick (pictured), who stormed The Seedlings Stage having won their spot via a talent competition. Catriona, their lead singer, is the Katy Perry of Caithness

I was primarily involved with the Co-op Verb Garden tent, where Iain MacWhirter runs a series of debates on everything from ecology to Yoof, and conducted a memorable interview with Lloyd Grossman (the sauce guy), there to play with his punk band. As tends to happen at Bella. I contributed to the debate on digital music, then, with Martha and James, performed for the first time the Drinking for Scotland show, which went really well. Martha and James both played brilliantly. Then, with John and Dick Beach from Fiddlers in Drumnadrochit, I was involved in two whisky tastings under the title Belladram. The cask strength Pulteney was wonderful.

Congratulations to Stephen Wright and all the Fairplay team, who ran the Verb Garden. Also to Chris on PA. A potentially nasty incident was averted after the festival programme closed on Saturday night when a stray 'floating airborne lantern' set fire to the roof of the Verb Garden tent. It was quickly extinguished, there was little damage and no-one was hurt.

The Fiddlers in Drumnadrochit is a lovely pub, a real centre of whisky excellence and has both a greta coffee shop and some very nice rooms, where we stayed. Thanks to everyone there for the hospitality.

The camper van behaved impeccably throughout, and we were in Aberdeen yesterday in plenty of time for the boat. Alas, I'd forgotten to book the van onto the boat, but NorthLink managed to squeeze us on, despite a packed car deck (it was the Orkney Show weekend, and a host of horseboxes was due on in Kirkwall). Now we're home.

A word about the food at Belladrum. It was superb. And having a Co-op outlet meant drinks and sandwiches could be obtained at shop prices. Oh, and finally, the Hielan' Fields, where all the Reiki, meditation and Findhornian folk were in action. I met a guy who had gone up there to see what was happening, and found there a 'Celtic Wishing Tree' where you had to write your healing request on a ribbon and pin it to said object. Out of curiosity, and in a spirit of groovy identification with the mystic vibe, man, he had a look at what was written on a couple of the ribbons. The first read 'I wish I had a bigger dick'; the second said 'I wish that Rangers would get relegated and Aberdeen win the championship.' Not Celtic, then?

Back in Inverness

Inverness sunset

The camper van made it to Inverness from Aberdeen without any untoward excitement, and after raiding Tescos for tea (that Cumberland sausage is always a motorhome winner)teabags, milk and coffee, I discovered there was no gas. Ah well. Not that I had any matches to light the cooker anyway.

I was parked up, for old times' sake, in the BBC car park. This was the site, some 14years ago, of my now-infamous period of living, weeknights and days in said car park, in a dubious Fiat camper soemone had driven from, funnily enough, Italy and abandoned in Cullen. That was an early morning show and sometimes I had to be physically extracted from said van, in no fit state to do anything, let alone present a radio programme.

The view

Now, of course, being older, saner and more abstemious, I sipped a small claret and gazed at the, err...view. Then I took a walk around the Inverness I know better these days as the fictional landscape of my novel Serpentine. Only to find it quite different. Dolphinsludge, Queen of the Highland Fleshpots, is now quite the upmarket boutique city. It was also, as usual at this time of year, utterly rammed with tourists of every nationality. And who can blame them? Inverness remains one of the most spectacularly sited cities in Europe, and the summer sunsets are Landseer Stag-At-Bay specials.

My night in the camper was not without its problems. The bed is extremely narrow. It collapsed during the night (my fault; I hadn't set it up properly. I kept having dreams about waking up to find myself snowed in, or panicking due to being late for a radio programme. Then I realised that those weren't dreams. They were memories...

James and Martha arrived this morning on the train from Aberdeen, after a good trip down on the boat. The show today has live music from Pearl and the Puppets, who are playing at Belladrum, as are Martha, James and myself (Co-op Verb Garden Tent). Weather so far looking good, and the festival, for the first time in its history, is sold out.

As for the camper, it looks like we might NOT have to actually sleep in it...

John Connolly's excellent new novel...

...is called The Lovers, and is the latest in the series involving private eye protagonist Charlie Parker. Thoroughly recommended, and unusual in its combination of hard-nosed crime, supernatural nastiness and full-on horror. Not to mention a bit of Irish humour, all backed up with a beautifully realised Maine/NYC setting.

Connolly (no, not Michael Connelly) has a website, which you can find at
http://www.johnconnollybooks.com/. Here's a very funny excerpt from one of his pieces (for Ottakers Magazine) concering what authors may or may not get up to on book tours...


One well-known female American writer requires a small dog to stroke when she makes bookstore appearances, since it is the only way that she can calm her nerves. Any number of writers demand a bottle of wine at their right hand when they sign books, and it's a safe bet that they don't leave very much in the bottle by the end of the night, while one Booker winner asked for a complete chicken dinner before facing an audience. A famous gay American writer visiting Britain insisted on being guided around the clubs used in the TV series "Queer as Folk", despite repeated assurances that the series was filmed in the studio. He greeted each unfamiliar club with a baffled "It sure looked different on TV."

And legendarily, a now-deceased male American writer of "bonkbuster" novels apparently required his publishers to provide a suitably accommodating young lady at the end of every evening on tour. My publishers will stretch to a pint of beer and a packet of crisps, which is not the same thing at all.

Caddie lambs at the Voe show

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'Caddie' in this instance, referring to tame or pet lambs/sheep, often hand-reared and familiar presences in the household. Only not ours, where I fear Lulu the St Bernard would look balefully on the notion.

It was cold, grey and damp at the Voe Show, though as always it was good to see the seriously high quality animals, produce, cakes, craft and art work produced by folk. I had to stop Susan renting a cherry picker which resembled a Tiger Tank.

Very annoyed to see that the show had permitted the dangerous dickheads from the supposed 'Shetland Independent Ambulance Service' to mount a display. Make no mistake, these people are a menace and no-one should have any truck with them at all. Sometimes the Shetlandic culture of polite diffidence can be a menace. I had to stop myself doing that Glaswegian thing and starting something of a ruckus. In my opinion, it's an utter disgrace that the show committee allowed them to participate. This is the Shetland Fantasy Ambulance website:
http://www.shetlandambulance.co.uk/ but it's worth looking at the requisite ShetLink threads here:
http://www.shetlink.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7778&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=225