Undiscovered Scotland

 

Danny Marwick is a "blogger", a copywriter if you prefer. He makes a living, an increasingly good living, writing material to fill up catalogues, marketing blurbs, sales brochures, or agony columns in youth magazines. He is also a singer-songwriter who makes a few quid on the side singing in an Edinburgh pub on a couple of evenings each week. But while his copywriting is outstanding, his songwriting is anything but. Everyone thinks so, even the fan club comprising his mother, his aunt and his aunt's best friend who always come to listen to him sing: or more accurately to talk over him singing, like everyone else in the pub. Danny is a likeable bloke, but he feels that his life isn't really going anywhere. He fell into blogging after it was suggested to him by the boss's wife in the call centre he previously worked in, while they were in bed together after the office Christmas party. He's never looked back, but still wishes he could write better songs.

And then his life takes an unexpected turn. He's approached by a mysterious woman - an extremely attractive mysterious woman, it turns out - to write holiday brochures making highly dubious claims about highly unlikely destinations. There's obviously something really odd about all of this, but Danny's not complaining. The woman, Rosaria McTavish, moves into his flat and his life, and pays him unfeasibly large amounts of money for the work he produces for her. She even manages to transform his song-writing skills.

It's at about this point that the hints of highly amusing weirdness that have been present from the start of "The Blogger Who Came in from the Cold" by Gordon Lawrie really start to come to the fore. Danny is well aware that the work he's doing for Rosaria isn't all it seems, or, more accurately, is much more than it seems. Meanwhile, he's realised that there are odd men watching his flat; there's an attempt on his life; and he gets into a row with his mother's church minister over the rights to the words of a Christmas carol that Danny - or more accurately Rosaria - has written.

This is one of those books you read without the slightest idea of where it's going or why: but which you keep on reading because finding out is such an enjoyable experience. We'll avoid revealing any more of the plot. Suffice it to say that the sense of losing grip on reality - for Danny and for the reader - increases steadily as you progress. A scene about half way through in which a Salvation Army band and a church guitar ensemble come into direct conflict in the street outside Danny's flat marks a departure into slapstick that remains present through the rest of the book: all the way to a nicely constructed and satisfying conclusion. As we've already suggested, this is a book we enjoyed reading enormously, and which we would recommend to anyone wanting something a little different.