Hobby groups in East Lothian

This novel follows a family of missionaries who go to live in a village in Africa. Their lives are torn apart by the forceful character of the father and they must all find their own way to survive as a civil war breaks out around them.

Here’s my review: I thoroughly enjoyed this, it was a random selection from a gorgeously curated book shop in East Lothian Scotland in a wee village called Stow. I was in the mood for something halfway between a thriller and a literary novel with a crime element to it. Not being one to begin with genre segregation of books, I was pleased to see that this was advertised somewhere in the hinterland between crime & thrillers. The main characters are truly memorable. I’m left wondering what they are up to now, and I’m really looking forward to the next two books based on the two main characters backstory for Sheldon and next book in the series for Sigrid. The Scandi noir theme of books has been awash and some might say bloated in most recent years, however there are some true gems out there if you know where to look. This is such an intriguing and unputdownable book, it’s not what I thought it was upon reading the blurb it was oh so much more. The humour is pitch perfect as is the reflections of aging and regrets. Looking forward to more from the author. “Clarity that comes from aging-from the natural process of releasing the mind from imagined futures, and allowing the present and the past to take their rightful place at the center of our attention.”

Damon Fields is born to a single teenage mother in a trailer home in Lee County, in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. He has red hair, inherited from his dead father, who was a Melungeon. He is nicknamed "Demon Copperhead" for the colour of his hair and his attitude (a copperhead is a snake species). Demon spends much of his time with their neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. Peggot, who are raising their grandchild Matt Peggot (nicknamed Maggot). Maggot and Demon are the same age and become best friends.

What I love about this book is its epic scale, telling the story of the Winter family in Germany from the turn of 20th Century, up until 1945. Harold Winter is a businessman with two sons, each of whom becomes a lawyer. One becomes part of the Nazi “machine”, dreaming up legal justification for their actions, whilst the other emigrates to their mother’s American homeland, becomes vigorously opposed to Nazi ideology, and returns to Germany as a prosecutor in the Nuremberg War Crimes trials. The book is something of a prequel to Deighton’s “Game, Set and Match” trilogy, which eventually became part of a nine novel trilogy of trilogies! Several characters (or their forebears) from these novels appear in Winter, which gives the reader much broader historical context. For me Winter, and its successor novels, provides a fascinating historical perspective of life in Berlin in the first half of the 20th Century, its influence on the conduct of the Cold War, and an interesting commentary on people from working class backgrounds workung alongside their Oxbridge educated counterparts in the British Secret Service, a theme that runs through other Deighton books like The Ipcress File.

It’s beautifully written. Full of description and a wonderful story which draws you I

Slightly futuristic but not too silly, and a cracking plot

Continues the story of James Bond. Willy Boyd is a great writer