Badlands opens with the horror of a man gradually waking to find himself fully and sharply dressed on a hotel bed in the Highlands with no memory of who he is or how he got there. And he is not alone, a secondary horror which drives him to seek the help of a girl in a pub before he takes off on a flight through the landscape in search of answers and an identity.

The girl in the pub, herself a stranger, is on a quest to unlock family secrets that are rooted in Vienna. Two characters, an amnesiac man stumbling around the countryside and a single-minded young woman forced by circumstance to reconnect with her Austrian roots, carry the plot and their paths cross and divide as they gradually work towards its eventual resolution.

About the Author

Born in Carnoustie, Angus in 1936, Deirdre Chapman was working as a journalist from the age of nineteen - feature writer, columnist, TV critic, book reviewer and travel writer. Her short stories have been published in several volumes - and she served on the Literature Committee of the Scottish Arts Council and on various related committees concerned with the development and widening of readership.

As Hugh MacDiarmid's daughter-in-law, she has been contributing biographical forewords as well as first-hand glimpses of MacDiarmid's life for ongoing research, since her husband Michael died in 1995.

She and Michael had three sons who, with the help of their wives, have provided six grandchildren. She lives in Glasgow and has spent much of the past three decades on the Greek island which lent the scenic and atmospheric background to her novel, The Noontide Sun.

Reviews

"Badlands is a rollercoaster of a yarn in the tradition of John Buchan, with a fast-paced plot full of deceptions, dangers, murders, bluffs and blurred identities, and power games being played out against a backdrop of Highland landscapes and castles and luxurious Vienna apartments. But Deirdre Chapman uses the events of this adventure story to make some serious points about contemporary politics and society, and how historic secrets, apparently long forgotten, can raise their heads and cause fresh mayhem decades later." - James Robertson

Book Information
ISBN 9781913212407
Author Deirdre Chapman
Format Paperback
Imprint Vagabond Voices
Publisher Vagabond Voices
Dimensions(mm) 210mm * 140mm * 19mm