No Peace for a Decent Man by John McDougall
The Glasgow underworld started the fight. The village of Clachaig will finish it. Three ordinary people must cross a line from which there is no return.
Clachaig is a fictional village on the west coast of Argyll in Scotland. Graeme Maxwell, a retired teacher whose wife has recently died, has moved here because he feels he must find somewhere new, where there will be another reason to live.
He begins to make friends, three in particular. There’s Layla, who’s ten years old and needs help with her maths. There’s Andrew, a minister of the church whose methods for combatting evil owe more to Old Testament vengeance than modern law. And there’s Amanda, who’s hot as hell, but more than a little crazy.
Clachaig seems idyllic, a haven of peace removed from the mad world created by Britain’s far right government. But the world catches up: James Smith, a gangland boss from Glasgow who has links to the corridors of power, has a score to settle with Layla’s father, and he’s notorious for using unspeakable violence against the children of his enemies. Graeme and Amanda agree with Andrew that the police cannot provide protection 24/7; they must do that themselves. That leads them down a dangerous road, facing first Smith, then a police superintendent who is hand in glove with the government. As the violence escalates, Graeme has to cope with the screaming objections of his own conscience, the plague of insomnia, and his obsessive fear of going to jail. But salvation may arrive, from an unlikely source…
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Author Bio:
John McDougall graduated in classics from the University of Glasgow and taught for many years in Scottish secondary schools, retraining along the way so that he could teach computing. Encouraged by his wife, who may have wanted a bit of peace, he left teaching a little early and travelled extensively in southeast Asia, where he found material for his first three novels. He is now content to live in Argyll with his wife, although they still travel to southeast Asia to see their adult children. In his spare time he likes to walk, swim, read, write, and engage in conversations. This is his fifth novel, the second set in his native Scotland. It once again explores a theme of perennial interest to him: the intersection of politics with the daily lives of ordinary, and sometimes not-so-ordinary, people.