Runaway

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Five of us had run away that fateful night just over a month before. Only three of us would be going home. And nothing, nothing would ever be the same again. I enjoyed the adventures the five young men and the three older men had, though there were elements that felt seriously contrived (of course the young men will just happen to stumble upon an icon or three of the era). The shifts between 1960s London and 2015 London were well handled, with the gradual revelations aiding our growing understanding of the key characters. I like the honesty of the overall story arc. Not all mistakes can be fixed, but life carries on regardless. But I think that would be a mistake. The 1960s was just a few years away from the end of the worst war in the history of mankind, and the most heinous act of evil perpetrated by the Nazis in the form of the Holocaust.

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So do you remember where you were 50 years ago? These aging lads do – but they do not seem completely sure of how and why they have gotten to where they are. The streets of London were not, as in legend, paved with gold, but money walked the pavements and motored the roads. Fifty years later, in 2015, a brutal murder takes place in London and the three men, who are now in their sixties, are forced to return to the city to confront the demons which have haunted them and blighted their lives for five decades. Beginning with a murder in 2015, both murderer and victim’s identities initially unknown, it forces three friends to face the events that determined the path their lives would take fifty years ago. Flats that, once renovated, are still lived in today, while those they built to replace them have long since been demolished.Peter May has done it again. He’s created yet another thrilling read, one that pulls you in from the start until the end.

Runaway by Peter May | Goodreads

This novel marks something of a change of pace from previous Peter May novels I’ve read. In many ways, the subject matter, social commentary and frequent splashes of humour are more reminiscent of fellow Scot, Christopher Brookmyre: but that’s certainly no bad thing. Fifty years later one of the adventures, now dying from terminal cancer, wants to do the journey again. He has unfinished business in London and want to put it to rest before he dies. So with the help of his best friends, now all old, the trip is once again undertaken. The trip is a replica of the 1965 trip but this time seen through the eyes of older and wiser heads. I must say that the indentity of the perpetrator of the coercive and criminal scenarios made all the sense in the world to me, and the nature of the disaster in the past was very deeply sad if not terribly unusual. The pure-D unadulterated Peter-May-ness of the resolution to the disasters past and present stems from his utter, abject inability to leave a thread to dangle. Every last end is tightly bound up. I have never felt the need to say anything to any author before and don’t really know how or what to say now.Everything starts to go horribly wrong for them from the beginning of their road trip. Finally disillusioned, dirty and exhausted, and with very little money, they arrive at their destination. In London their hopes for a music career are dashed and they fall in with people who claim to have connections with the entertainment business. They stay at a place where alcohol and drugs are available. After adventures and misadventures in London, three of the bitterly disappointed young men return to Glasgow. Five very young men, disillusioned with life in Glasgow, decide to leave home and seek fame and fortune in London. Just a note left, for unsuspecting parents, to say goodbye. Caricatures and lazy stereotypes in the lives of the characters persist throughout the book: the altercation between the main character and his love interest over her use of Heroin and her subsequent, almost effortless, cold turkey; the tripped out kid who thinks he can fly; the improbable job offer; the adoption of the characters into a bohemian collective mere hours after their arrival in London; the abandonment of the Glasgow end of the storyline half way through the book; the arrival of an antagonist out of nowhere to precipitate the event that is presumably the whole point of the story but which feels like an afterthought; and even the denouement, ultimately all ring false.

Runaway | Peter May Author

I have just finished reading ‘Runaway’ and while I have read counless books over many years I’m struggling to recall feeling so moved. Regret is such a waste of energy. You can’t undo what’s been done. But every new day offers the chance to shape it in the way you want” The settings are finely drawn. The characters believable, three dimensional and empathetic. I love their mission, and the ending has more than a few twists. This is more than a work of crime fiction, this is more than just a contemporary narrative, this is more than the sum these elements … so much more. This is a story of life, of death, of adventure, of the potential of youth and the potential of older age and mostly this is the story of enduring friendships. And this is about pain, without pain you have nothing. I’ve read four of Peter May’s novels so far, and enjoyed each one of them. There were a few twists that I didn’t work out in this novel until close to the end: I suspect that I was too busy reading to find out what would happen next rather than paying close attention to the detail.

Five of us had run away that fateful night just over a month before. Only three of us would be going home. And nothing, nothing would ever be the same again."