Richard T Kelly writes the kind of chunky panoramic sagas thought to have gone out with the ark. Crusaders (2008) took place in his native Newcastle upon Tyne ahead of New Labour’s rise to power; The Knives (2016), more thrillerish, offered a non-demonising portrait of a beleaguered Tory home secretary in 2010. His quietly stimulating new novel, set in the years between Suez and Thatcher, centres on the discovery of North Sea oil, a subject rich in irony, not least because the advent of “black gold”, seen as the bedrock of arguments for Scottish independence, instead shored up the 80s dominance of the Tories – to say nothing of helping to overheat the planet.
The story unspools mostly in the Highlands and involves five main characters, chiefly two pairs of male friends whose contrasting fortunes we follow from boyhood into middle age. Robbie is a farm boy whose luck with the lassies is a torment to Aaron, a shy schoolteacher’s son about to study geology. Then there’s Edinburgh public school pals Mark and Ally, one an aspiring journalist with thoughts of running for office, the other a future financier who ends up holding the keys to every other character’s hopes – including those of Joe, heir to a fishing trawler dynasty on a collision course with the EU as well as a tide of overseas oil prospectors scenting riches.
