A last-chance winter road trip for a Scottish band spirals into wild chaos - seagull massacres, bomb tests, and darkly funny rock'n'roll madness on the edge. A raw, darkly funny novel by one of Scotland's finest authors - newly reissued!

ANNIVERSARY EDITION

INTRODUCTION BY VAL MCDERMID

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Connor is twenty-four, brilliant, broken, and out of control. He's the swaggering frontman of The Ossians, a Scottish indie band on the brink of signing a major record deal.

Desperate to make their mark, they head off on a two-week winter tour across the cities and hinterlands of Scotland - a last-ditch attempt to find fame, purpose, and themselves.

But the tour soon spirals into a surreal, chaotic odyssey. From seedy bars and snowbound towns to a final, defining Glasgow gig, the band hurtles through a whirlwind of seagull massacres, botched drug deals, a mysterious stalker, radioactive beaches, bomb-testing ranges, epileptic fits, riotous Russian submariners, deadly storms, epiphanies, regular beatings and random shootings.

Raw, darkly funny and wild with energy, The Ossians is a gloriously anarchic story of rock'n'roll obsession, national identity and self-destruction, and what it means to belong - in a band, in a country, in a life unravelling at speed.

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About the Author
Doug Johnstone is the author of twelve novels, most recently The Great Silence, the third in the Skelfs series, which has been optioned for TV. In 2021,The Big Chill, the second in the series, was longlisted for the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. In 2020, A Dark Matter, the first in the series, was shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year and the Capital Crime Amazon Publishing Independent Voice Book of the Year award. Black Hearts (Book four), will be published in 2022. Several of his books have been best sellers and award winners, and his work has been praised by the likes of Val McDermid, Irvine Welsh and Ian Rankin. He's taught creative writing and been writer in residence at various institutions, and has been an arts journalist for twenty years. Doug is a songwriter and musician with five albums and three EPs released, and he plays drums for the Fun Lovin' Crime Writers, a band of crime writers. He's also player-manager of the Scotland Writers Football Club. He lives in Edinburgh.


Book Information
ISBN 9781917764209
Author Doug Johnstone
Format Paperback
Page Count 300
Imprint Orenda Books
Publisher Orenda Books