Chris Brookmyre

What are you suggesting is a good read?

I'm suggesting Espedere Street by my late friend Ian Banks, which is an almost fictionalised biography of a 70s rock star who, at the start of the novel, explains that he planned to kill himself, but then he's going to elaborate on why he changed his mind.

which is the result of a tumultuous and fairly uproarious week spent in Glasgow.

And that's intercut with the story of the band from him in his teenage years all the way through their 70s excess.

And it's a novel that I've loved since I first read it in about 1990.

I was in my late adolescence, but it's the stuff of male adolescent dreams, certainly about being a 70s rock star.

But it's so much more than that.

It's a very tender story that makes you care deeply for this wounded individual.

Oh, well, this took me back 40 years because it was 40 years since I last read this book.

I couldn't quite believe it.

I had to look at the publication date.

It's like one of those albums that you found in everybody's house.

Everybody in Scotland of a certain age had this book on their shelf, partly because it's set in Scotland.

And as you said, that's Scottish sensibility.

But it took me back to a time before social media, when people smoked in pubs, walking through the wet and the grime.

And the point before the bridge to nowhere that goes over the M8 was built on.

But I think it's a really beautiful book.

And I think there's something very nostalgic about it, about those 70s rock scenes.

But the scenes that were more alive to me were the scenes that were set in the present day.

And those scenes seemed more alive, actually, than the rock star excess.