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A review by fictionfan
Runaway by Peter May
5.0
Hit the road, Jack...
When Jack Mackay is expelled from school, he decides to run away to London. He tells his friends, the other four members of the band he plays in, and they decide to go with him – partly to get away from problems in their own lives, and partly to seek fame and fortune. It's 1965, and London is swinging – the place to be for all aspiring musicians. But it's also a place where young people can find themselves manipulated and used, and caught up in events they can't control. And Jack's London adventure ends with a killing. Fifty years on, one of the band members, Maurie, now terminally ill with cancer, reveals that the person everyone thought was the killer was innocent, and that he knows who really did it. He persuades Jack and Dave, the two remaining band members still living in Glasgow, to go back with him to London to put things right while there's still time.
The publicity blurb for the book tells us that parts of the story are based on May's own experiences of running away to London as a teenager. As with his last few books, this one has a double timeline. The story of the '60s London trip is told by Jack in the first-person, while the present day section is third person, though still very firmly from Jack's perspective, and both sections are written in the past tense. Though we know from the beginning that someone is murdered, we don't know who or why until near the end, so this has more of the feel of thriller than a mystery. We also know that Maurie knows whodunit, so there's no investigation element. Instead what we have are two linked but very different stories of the characters heading to London, and the gradual revelation of what happened to the boys in the earlier storyline once they got there.
Both timelines have a great feeling of authenticity and, as always with May, the sense of place is done superbly. I hadn't realised May grew up in the Southside of Glasgow (as did I), but the accuracy with which he describes it suggests he must have done. Although he's writing about a somewhat earlier era than my own, the places, attitudes, language and lifestyle are all spot-on. Spookily so, in fact – I kept finding parts of my own life mirrored in the story and spent much of the early part of the book being reminded of events and places in my own past.
The two journeys, 50 years apart, allow May to show the changes across the country in that time, and he does so very well. Both journeys take the form of road-trips, punctuated by accident and disaster, but lifted by a healthy dose of humour. Along the way, the boys rescue Maurie's cousin from her drug-dealing boyfriend and she becomes one of the gang as they finally arrive in London and start looking round for the streets paved with gold. And at first, when they are given lodgings and a job by a man who promises them a chance to cut a demo disc, it looks as though they have landed on their feet. But it's not long before things go wrong and start to spiral out of control.
The trip undertaken by the older version of the men in the present day is filled with a mixture of nostalgia and humour. It's through Jack's reminiscences during this trip that we see the earlier story unfold, and see him reassessing with the eyes of experience the risks to which his younger self laid himself open. Gradually we see how his whole life has been affected by the things that happened back then, with this trip giving him a chance for some kind of resolution and even redemption.
The one weakness of the book for me was the crime element itself. The murder and motive for it weren't quite strong enough to justify the lengthy lead-up – in fact, it felt a little as if it had been tacked on to justify the book being classed as a crime novel. The strength of the book is in the relationships between the boys as they face up to the realities of life; and later between the men as they come to terms with the events that had such an impact on each of their lives. The ending felt a little contrived to bring the whole thing to a neat conclusion.
Overall, though, this is an excellent read that convinces me again that May is at his strongest when he's writing about his own native country – his instinctive feel for the places and people is far more convincing than even his best researched books set elsewhere. But perhaps I'm biased...
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Quercus.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
When Jack Mackay is expelled from school, he decides to run away to London. He tells his friends, the other four members of the band he plays in, and they decide to go with him – partly to get away from problems in their own lives, and partly to seek fame and fortune. It's 1965, and London is swinging – the place to be for all aspiring musicians. But it's also a place where young people can find themselves manipulated and used, and caught up in events they can't control. And Jack's London adventure ends with a killing. Fifty years on, one of the band members, Maurie, now terminally ill with cancer, reveals that the person everyone thought was the killer was innocent, and that he knows who really did it. He persuades Jack and Dave, the two remaining band members still living in Glasgow, to go back with him to London to put things right while there's still time.
The publicity blurb for the book tells us that parts of the story are based on May's own experiences of running away to London as a teenager. As with his last few books, this one has a double timeline. The story of the '60s London trip is told by Jack in the first-person, while the present day section is third person, though still very firmly from Jack's perspective, and both sections are written in the past tense. Though we know from the beginning that someone is murdered, we don't know who or why until near the end, so this has more of the feel of thriller than a mystery. We also know that Maurie knows whodunit, so there's no investigation element. Instead what we have are two linked but very different stories of the characters heading to London, and the gradual revelation of what happened to the boys in the earlier storyline once they got there.
Both timelines have a great feeling of authenticity and, as always with May, the sense of place is done superbly. I hadn't realised May grew up in the Southside of Glasgow (as did I), but the accuracy with which he describes it suggests he must have done. Although he's writing about a somewhat earlier era than my own, the places, attitudes, language and lifestyle are all spot-on. Spookily so, in fact – I kept finding parts of my own life mirrored in the story and spent much of the early part of the book being reminded of events and places in my own past.
The two journeys, 50 years apart, allow May to show the changes across the country in that time, and he does so very well. Both journeys take the form of road-trips, punctuated by accident and disaster, but lifted by a healthy dose of humour. Along the way, the boys rescue Maurie's cousin from her drug-dealing boyfriend and she becomes one of the gang as they finally arrive in London and start looking round for the streets paved with gold. And at first, when they are given lodgings and a job by a man who promises them a chance to cut a demo disc, it looks as though they have landed on their feet. But it's not long before things go wrong and start to spiral out of control.
The trip undertaken by the older version of the men in the present day is filled with a mixture of nostalgia and humour. It's through Jack's reminiscences during this trip that we see the earlier story unfold, and see him reassessing with the eyes of experience the risks to which his younger self laid himself open. Gradually we see how his whole life has been affected by the things that happened back then, with this trip giving him a chance for some kind of resolution and even redemption.
The one weakness of the book for me was the crime element itself. The murder and motive for it weren't quite strong enough to justify the lengthy lead-up – in fact, it felt a little as if it had been tacked on to justify the book being classed as a crime novel. The strength of the book is in the relationships between the boys as they face up to the realities of life; and later between the men as they come to terms with the events that had such an impact on each of their lives. The ending felt a little contrived to bring the whole thing to a neat conclusion.
Overall, though, this is an excellent read that convinces me again that May is at his strongest when he's writing about his own native country – his instinctive feel for the places and people is far more convincing than even his best researched books set elsewhere. But perhaps I'm biased...
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Quercus.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com