The Sound of Sirens by Ewan Gault
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.
About the author
Ewan Gault is the author of the novel ‘The Most Distant Way’ and numerous short stories that have appeared in anthologies and magazines including New Writing Scotland and Gutter.
In his new crime novel ‘The Sound of Sirens’, a body is dredged up in a trawler’s nets bringing with it submerged secrets to the surface. Extracts from the novel have won the Fish Knife Award and the Toulmin Prize.
He works as an English teacher in a sixth form college in Tottenham.
Review
‘The Sound of Sirens’ is a gritty harsh look at the state of fishing villages in the north east of Scotland. It shows how communities can be decimated when a local industry like fishing declines and the knock on effects this can have on the local residents through poverty, violence, drugs and organised crime. This is a book which is more than just a crime book, its also a reflection on the state of our economically isolated areas and the reality which many people face. It shows us how people can be dragged into stuff that they don’t want to but are dealing the best they know how.
Malky, a 17 year old, is working on his family’s fishing trawler for the first time with his uncles and his cousins. However, his cousin who went missing overboard is caught in the nets they have to face whether this was a simple accident or something else is afoot. Did his cousins throw him over the rails? DI Stark is tasked with looking at the situation but struggles to find out what actually happened as there is no physical evidence.
Malky was a character you can’t help but like, even though he makes some questionable decisions throughout the book. His story shows that even when you have good intentions just one set of circumstances can lead to the start of a ball rolling which can’t be stopped. Malky is that boy in the family who might have had the chance to escape from Port Cawdor as he has the artist talent to go to university. However, it is his cousins which bring him down and the group which they hang around with. Drugs are rampant in this town and he has friends which are addicted to heroin and being used by the incomers and county lines gangs. It was a nice change to have a crime novel where the balance of the narrative was more on the ‘bad guy’ POV, as it allowed the author to show the intricate balance of right vs wrong and that grey middling area which Malky inhabited.
This is was darkly captivating story that shows the best and worst in society. It grabbed my attention and my heart. I definitely recommend this one.
