Undiscovered Scotland

 

"The Man on the Endless Stair" by Chris Barkley is a thoroughly engaging and enjoyable read. I suspect it is also one that will linger in the memory long after others have come and gone. In part that's because this is a book that's extremely hard to classify. Most of us feel more comfortable if we can assign what we're reading to a genre. Having read the publisher's description, repeated below, I embarked on what I expected to be a murder mystery set on a Hebridean island cut off from the world in the 1950s. At that level it's a superb read, written in the first person in way that turns the island and the events that take place on it into a slightly surreal dreamscape.

But then, slowly, as a reader you begin to realise that nothing is what it seems. Yes, there are the plot twists you'd expect at the end of any good murder mystery. But they are nothing to the way the genre itself is warped in a truly innovative way, leaving you realising at the end that you've been reading a very different sort of book all along. And that, dear reader, is about as far as I can take it without spoiling anything. Save to say that this is a great novel: buy it!

The publisher's description sets out the framework of the story: "When troubled but talented young author Euan meets decorated novelist Malcolm Furnivall, he feels his luck has finally changed. Malcolm takes Euan as a protégé, vouching for him in the rarefied literary scene in the 1950s. But lately, Malcolm has not been himself. Consumed by his work, he cuts an increasingly isolated figure and has become convinced that something terrible will befall him. He summons his loved ones to his secluded island in the Hebrides and – to everyone's surprise – entrusts Euan with the task of completing his masterpiece."

"Malcolm's suspicions soon prove well-founded; he is discovered brutally murdered in his study, and his invaluable unfinished novel has vanished. Cut off from the mainland, with the killer on the loose and the island's inhabitants circling, Euan feels both his mentor's legacy and his only chance at greatness slipping away. He must venture deep into Malcolm's labyrinthine mansion to find the manuscript before it falls into the wrong hands. But what he doesn't yet know is that the closer he comes to solving the mystery, the tighter he will bind himself to a fate sealed in time . . ."