News From Nowhere Radical & Community Bookshop

• home
• browse books
• book details:

Tommy the Bruce

by James Yorkston - £10.99  Oldcastle Books Ltd (2024)
paperback    ISBN 13: 9780857305947 | ISBN 10: 0857305948

** An unsettling, atmospheric noir set in the remote Scottish Highlands, perfect for fans of Close to Home by Michael Magee, Elmet by Fiona Mozley, The Night Always Comes by Willy Vlautin and Pine by Francine Toon **
 
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. And in Tommy himself we've an anti-hero as unlike his historical namesake as could be imagined - shoulderless, very nearly spineless and not at all the man to save himself, Fiona and their future. Until you push him too far...

(Price & availability last checked: December 2024)

Order by email

×

Tommy the Bruce - by James Yorkston

Please fill in the order form, & we will reply as soon as we can to confirm your order & tell you how long it will take. Choose between collection from our bookshop or mail-order, for which we charge postage at cost, at current Royal Mail rates

Select type of order: Collect & pay in the shop - I live in or can visit Liverpool Mail-order - send me a card payment link Mail-order - I will pay another way & give details in the notes section

Your name:

Please fill out this field.

Your email address

Please check carefully that you have entered your email correctly

Please fill out this field.

Your phone number (required for order as back-up contact method):

Please check carefully that you have entered your phone number correctly.

Please fill out this field.

Notes (optional - for additional message or information about your order):

Close

Enquire about this book

×

Tommy the Bruce

by James Yorkston

Your name:

Please fill out this field.

Your email address

Please check carefully that you have entered your email correctly

Please fill out this field.

Your phone number (optional):

Your message:

Please fill out this field.

(optional) If you are interested in ordering this book, would your order be for collection or mail-order? Select type of order : Collect from the shop - I live in or can visit Liverpool Mail-order - send by post

Close

In booklists: Uncategorised,
In categories: