Undiscovered Scotland

 

As a teenager Jane Fleming from East Kilbride had dreamt of playing in the casinos of Monte Carlo in the company of James Bond. But in her punk phase she'd got herself pregnant and by the time she reached forty-six she'd been a been a grandmother for three years, her dreams as dry as the dust her Dyson sucked up from her pristine hall carpet every day.

Rebekah from Canada had been a teenage hacker, bypassing security systems across the world until one exploit too many saw her shut down a power station near Jeddah and stop oil production in two major oilfields for eight hours: an act that saw her arrival on the US Government's "most wanted" list of terrorists. Arrest and imprisonment were only hours away when she was recruited by Bett, leader of a shadowy band of "security experts" for hire, based in France.

In All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye by Christopher Brookmyre, you find yourself following alternately one then the other as Jane and Rebekah's world's converge, before colliding in an East Kilbride supermarket. Suddenly Jane is leading the James Bond lifestyle she always dreamed about, stealing cars and identities in a desperate race to cross Europe: she even ends up gambling in a casino on the shores of the Mediterranean with the chief villain of the story. But this is real life, and it's likely that someone is going to lose an eye...

This book is great fun, nicely written and paced, and you find yourself really caring about Jane; believing in the way her life changes; and hoping against hope that it doesn't all end where it started, back with a desperate housewife in grim domesticity in East Kilbride.