Tommy the Bruce

AN UNSETTLING, ATMOSPHERIC NOIR SET IN THE REMOTE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS

Meet Tommy Bruce – he’ s washed-up already, marooned in a ramshackle hotel inherited from dead parents in the armpit of Perthshire, that’ s just too far off the main tourist trail to be viable. He’ s too young to be middle-aged, but too old to be what you could call young (and too lazy to care about it, really). Saddled with debt, grotty premises that are falling down around him, and a crippling loneliness, Tommy is slowly but determinedly drinking himself and his business out of existence.

Until one day into the lounge-bar, and out of the blue, walks Fiona McLean. And before long she’ s moved behind the bar, into the hotel, and (remarkably) into Tommy’ s bed. Fiona blows into Tommy’ s life and through the hotel, and with the light she brings, Tommy’ s fortunes might just be turning around; but in her wake has also slipped in darkness – names and faces from the past who mean Tommy no goodwill at all, criminal forces that threaten to ruin him, the hotel, and what little happiness he’ s managed, haplessly, to cobble together.

Tommy the Bruce is a precise, chilling and all too believable crime novel – scored throughout with a genuinely unsettling menace, which is belied by the ease of Yorkston's storytelling and humour. It's a shot of Southern Gothic poured out in the central Highlands.