ISBN 978-1-923680-75-3
PAPERBACK
Tyrant Of The Glen
The village kept its secrets. The truth refused to stay buried.
A Scottish village is surrounded by ancient monuments and invisible links to a dark past.
It’s a region with an epic history of clan battles, interruptions from Kings and a 15th century castle once under siege from Jacobite uprisings and gunpowder plots.
Farmer’s son Minty Fallow has the innocence of a teenager in the 1970s. But that’s all unravelling as he realizes the Church cemetery contains some unholy ghosts.
His friendship with a crack-shot local poacher shows him the law can be broken with generous intent. Other laws are obeyed by aristocrats whose ancestors destroyed thousands of vulnerable people.
Meanwhile, his carefree life is coming under harsh scrutiny. His parents disapprove of his blossoming friendship with an older woman derided by his Mum as the “wicked witch of the wood”.
And his close friendship with the direct descendant of the area’s wealthiest dynasty becomes strained amid whispers about exploitation and cruelty in a faraway land fi lled with sunshine and song.
A series of explosive events has echoes of a high octane past still visible but long gone.
Alone, Minty has to negotiate them all.
About the Author
Robbie Brechin had a childhood steeped in British comics like The Beezer or The Dandy. In fact, DC Thomson and its imaginative, whimsical contributors were arguably the most influential.
Early books: Enid Blyton. Robert Louis Stevenson and Rider Haggard. Later: Jack Kerouac, Hunter S Thompson, Graham Greene, Tom Sharpe, Spike Milligan, Raymond Chandler, James Lee Burke, Eveline Waugh, Peter Ackroyd, Hilary Mantel, Robert Caro and Jeremy Clarkson.
I was able to leave the very weak scent of a few of my literary heroes when I landed a job as a trainee reporter on the Campbeltown Courier, landing an interview with Jack Bruce of the rock band Cream. To my joy, that yarn over a pint was published by a special favourite of mine in the last century, The New Musical Express. Hello Nick Kent, Charles Shaar Murray.
In the line of duty (such expenses-paid, junket hardship!) I swapped jokes with Prime Ministers, got to meet favourite rock stars, pretended not to notice the stale breath of an IRA terrorist in an up-close interview in a doorway, was banished from the Royal Yacht Britannia for insolence in a colour article published on the front page of the Adelaide Advertiser.
That’s enough humble bragging from me. And don’t even ask about hobbies. (Whisper: I am a Virgo) Though you mayone day hear in the media of one of my three grandchildren, Kai, Imani and Sierra.