‘Ihe killings continued...’

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) December 19, 2011 -- ‘In lucid moments, Coulthard accepts how his mind has become scrambled more than Dinger will ever know. Sometimes then he thinks he is himself. But he doesn’t like himself. He likes being other people.’

Banana Pier is set in the final frenzied days of Soviet communism in which fiction collides with fact. Moral ambiguities which underpin our society are revealed in a story of complex characters and unexpected links between Scotland, the Soviet Union and Northern Ireland, where global players are seen in their domestic settings and where some dialogue is in the Aberdeen dialect, Doric. It opens with a confused and obsessive tirade from Tommy MacHardy in conversation with journalist Ian Ross, who is investigating covert military activities in Ulster involving Brigadier Bell of TAGOil. Ross is determined to reveal the British government’s role in Northern Ireland and its infiltration of paramilitary groups but attracts the attention of local detectives DI Bonnie Young and DS Dave Millar on the case of blackmail at TAGOil.

The action switches between Scotland and the USSR where former Gordon Highlander, Coulthard, is introduced to small-time criminals Zhdanov and Dolgoruky, recent associates of computer expert and artist Alexei Grigoryev. Coulthard is purchasing ‘scrap’ hardware from disillusioned Soviet military officers but where are the weapons headed – and what has Coulthard got to do with the UK government?

“I was inspired to write Banana Pier after visits to the Soviet Union in 1989 and 1991 and an overheard remark made by an oil company executive in Aberdeen Art Gallery linking him with Soviet energy production. It is clear that the greater the potential rewards the more ruthless people will be prepared to become and this was evident with some of the people I came across in Russia who became sources for characters in Banana Pier,” says Alex.

ALEX CHISHOLM was born in the Black Isle in the Scottish Highlands but lives in Aberdeenshire. A former History teacher, Alex researches and writes historical articles. Banana Pier is Alex’s first novel and is the result of an eavesdropped conversation between oil executives and a fascination with politics.

PUBLICATION DATE 1st January 2012
ISBN: 9781780880143 Price: £8.99

Alex Chisholm     Banana Pier     communism     Matador Troubador     political thriller     scotland     soviet     ussr