Ted Gillman is coming home after twenty-two years... to the lover who never forgot, the murder victim who didn’t die, the brother who wouldn’t stay buried... and to the city whose streets all lead to the graveyard.
Marty Ross, best known for BBC radio dramas such as Ghost Zone, Catch My Breath, The Darker Side Of The Border, Moyamensing and the BBC Radio Scotland thriller The Dead Of Fenwick Moor, as well as for his Doctor Who audio dramas Night’s Black Agents and Lurkers At Sunlight’s Edge, plus Dark Shadows: Dress Me In Dark Dreams (nominated for a 2013 Scribes Award), here follows up his debut novel Aztec Love Song (also available on Amazon) with another intense psychological thriller, this one set on the meanest, darkest streets of his home town of Glasgow. As Ted is forced to face up to the most willfully forgotten moments of his past, old passions and terrors make of the city’s streets a nightmare hall of mirrors in which murder and memory are tinged with the downright uncanny.
For the novel isn’t simply set in Glasgow. It aspires to BE Glasgow: as intricate, as Gothic, as violent, as darkly beautiful, as bloody-mindedly black-humorous, as downright frightening as the city itself can be... a haunted space in the thick of which you can never be sure of what lies around the next corner: ghost or vision, echo of the past or present-tense danger. More Gothic novel than simple genre thriller, to haunt is its highest ambition. Marty Ross has also enjoyed recent success as a live performance storyteller, his show 21st. Century Poe, relocating classic tales by Poe to modern Glasgow a hit at both the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe and London Horror Festivals - and Glasgow, Like A Stranger might be best understood as being in the tradition of Poe, the Poe of the psychological terror and drama of William Wilson or The Tell Tale Heart, rather than of the generic crime novel. Reviews of 21st Century Poe testify to his power as a storyteller...
"Ross is a master craftsman who never turns down the pressure, painting vile pictures and weaving a grotesque spell... the tone is foul and relentless, Trainspotting meets Gothic horror... insanely good storytelling" - Broadway Baby
"Ross has a great aptitude for suspense and terror, and he hurls himself into his tale with energy and passion, in words which ring with the native Glasgow rhythm..." The Scotsman
Cinematic in its intercutting of past and present, hard reality and the insides of haunted minds (think Nicolas Roeg or David Lynch rather than the standard police procedural) Glasgow, Like A Stranger is a challenging, ambitious, complex novel that will reward the reader weary of the more standard cut and dried thriller. If ‘tartan noir’ is to your taste, then come and lose yourself amid the twists and turns of Ross’s dark, labyrinthine and distinctly Scottish, imagination.
Genre: Thriller
Marty Ross, best known for BBC radio dramas such as Ghost Zone, Catch My Breath, The Darker Side Of The Border, Moyamensing and the BBC Radio Scotland thriller The Dead Of Fenwick Moor, as well as for his Doctor Who audio dramas Night’s Black Agents and Lurkers At Sunlight’s Edge, plus Dark Shadows: Dress Me In Dark Dreams (nominated for a 2013 Scribes Award), here follows up his debut novel Aztec Love Song (also available on Amazon) with another intense psychological thriller, this one set on the meanest, darkest streets of his home town of Glasgow. As Ted is forced to face up to the most willfully forgotten moments of his past, old passions and terrors make of the city’s streets a nightmare hall of mirrors in which murder and memory are tinged with the downright uncanny.
For the novel isn’t simply set in Glasgow. It aspires to BE Glasgow: as intricate, as Gothic, as violent, as darkly beautiful, as bloody-mindedly black-humorous, as downright frightening as the city itself can be... a haunted space in the thick of which you can never be sure of what lies around the next corner: ghost or vision, echo of the past or present-tense danger. More Gothic novel than simple genre thriller, to haunt is its highest ambition. Marty Ross has also enjoyed recent success as a live performance storyteller, his show 21st. Century Poe, relocating classic tales by Poe to modern Glasgow a hit at both the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe and London Horror Festivals - and Glasgow, Like A Stranger might be best understood as being in the tradition of Poe, the Poe of the psychological terror and drama of William Wilson or The Tell Tale Heart, rather than of the generic crime novel. Reviews of 21st Century Poe testify to his power as a storyteller...
"Ross is a master craftsman who never turns down the pressure, painting vile pictures and weaving a grotesque spell... the tone is foul and relentless, Trainspotting meets Gothic horror... insanely good storytelling" - Broadway Baby
"Ross has a great aptitude for suspense and terror, and he hurls himself into his tale with energy and passion, in words which ring with the native Glasgow rhythm..." The Scotsman
Cinematic in its intercutting of past and present, hard reality and the insides of haunted minds (think Nicolas Roeg or David Lynch rather than the standard police procedural) Glasgow, Like A Stranger is a challenging, ambitious, complex novel that will reward the reader weary of the more standard cut and dried thriller. If ‘tartan noir’ is to your taste, then come and lose yourself amid the twists and turns of Ross’s dark, labyrinthine and distinctly Scottish, imagination.
Genre: Thriller
Used availability for Marty Ross's Glasgow, Like A Stranger