From the Bookshelf of Around The World…

[close] [Runaway] by Peter May
4★

"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."

Glasgow, 1965. Headstrong teenager Jack Mackay cannot allow for even the possibility of a life of predictability and routine. The seventeen-year-old has just one destination on his mind--London--and successfully convinces his four friends, and fellow bandmates, to join him in abandoning their homes to pursue a goal of musical stardom.

Glasgow, 2015. Jack Mackay dares not look back on a life of failure and mediocrity. The heavy-hearted sixty-seven-year-old is still haunted by what might have been. His recollections of the terrible events that befell him and his friends some fifty years earlier, and how he did not act when it mattered most is a memory he has tried to escape his entire adult life.

London, 2015. A man lies dead in a one-room flat. His killer looks on, remorseless. What started with five teenagers following a dream five decades before has been transformed over the intervening decades into a waking nightmare that might just consume them all.

Three-quarters of the book is flashback where we learn about the early adventures of Jack and his friends in some detail. It was interesting to learn about the five young boys and why they left London, but it went on a bit too long. They also had numerous alarming and sometimes unbelievable series of encounters before getting away. It wasn't the best I have ever read by this author and I read later that it was partly based on real-life experiences by Peter May himself. I gave it 4 stars because overall it was interesting and entertaining by a really top of the line author.