Gallacher, Tom

London. 1985. Hamish Hamilton. 1st British Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0241115221. 195 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Paul Wright, typography by Mon Mohan. keywords: Literature Scotland . FROM THE PUBLISHER - ‘Surviving, it seemed, was a very dubious course of action which would be punished.' When the tanker on which Bill Thompson is chief engineer explodes in the southern Baltic with the loss of five lives, his relief at his own survival is temporary, soon replaced by the certainty that the charge of negligence hangs over no one's head more than his own. Whatever caused the Niome to sink bad its source in the engine room. In SURVIVOR, Tom Gallacher's impressive climax to the Bill Thompson trilogy, Thompson's life suddenly becomes fraught with absurd complications - and danger. Unable to prove that he was not negligent (you cannot prove you are not something), he sets out to discover why the ship did sink. Was she ‘cast away' - sunk on purpose - to claim the insurance payout of 15 million pounds? Can he prove ‘destructive diligence'? If so, on whose part? Even when the inquiry is over, the ripples it has spread still pursue him. His ‘damnable detachment' crumbles when he falls in love with Barbara, vigorous, energetic, a successful actress. But what of her relationship with the engineer officer who is Bill's sworn enemy? He begins to doubt his powers of survival on dry land. London is a hard place to be the captain of your soul. SURVIVOR takes Bill Thompson full circle. In the end it is Isa Mulvenny, his landlady who looked after him during his Clydeside years as an apprentice twenty-five years before, who provides him with his key to the future in a particularly poignant way. What started out as five short stories in APPRENTICE has borne fruit in three outstanding books, of which SURVIVOR, with Gallacher's unerring eye for the dramas of everyday life, is the unexpectedly moving finale. inventory #604 ISBN: 0241115221.