The Sound of Sirens

Book excerpt: In a dead-beat coastal town in North East Scotland, seventeen-year-old Malky Campbell is desperate to help his pregnant and heroin addicted girlfriend. DI Stark, a middle-aged detective, alarmed by the rise of teenage crime in Port Cawdor, uncovers the operations of a county line gang that are flooding the area with drugs and engaging in a vicious turf war with a local family. Malky has just started working on his family's trawler with his cousin Johnny, when their boat pulls up Johnny's brother in its nets. The rest of the crew, the tightly-knit community and the police start to suspect that the cousins are responsible for his death. With his brother dead, Johnny inherits the family trawler, which he plans to use to smuggle drugs into the country for the county line gang, giving him enough money to start a new life. Ewan Gault's debut, The Sound of Sirens is a tough, modern crime novel, presenting the complexities of young life in a town at the end of the line.'The Sound of Sirens reads like Irvine Welsh blended with Ian Rankin. A fast paced and darkly addictive crime story, exploring what it means to be young, male and on the peripheries of 21st century Scotland.' G. R. Halliday, author of Dark Shadows and From the Waters 'Beautifully and darkly written, The Sound of Sirens is redolent with the reek of the boats and ports of the North East coast, and the stench of crime. Ewan Gault's writing perfectly shows the hardship of life at sea, and disaffected youth struggling to survive on dry land, where the only escape is addiction.' Mark Leggatt, author of The Silk Road and The London Cage 'A gritty, murderous crime novel? A Bildungsroman? A scathing indictment of wasted youth in contemporary Scotland? This excellent page turner is all of these and more, and is guaranteed to please to the last breath.' Craig Gibson, One O'Clock Gun