In a dead-beat coastal town in North East Scotland, seventeen-year-old Malky Campbell is desperate to help his pregnant and heroin addicted girlfriend.
DI Stark, a middle-aged detective, alarmed by the rise of teenage and gang crime in Port Cawdor, uncovers the operations of a county line gang that are flooding the area with drugs and engaging in a vicious turf war with the local crime family.
Malky has just started working on his family's trawler with his cousin Johnny, when their boat pulls up Johnny's brother in its nets. The rest of the crew, the tightly-knit community and the police start to suspect that the cousins are responsible for his death.
With his brother dead, Johnny inherits the family trawler, which he had planned to use to smuggle drugs into the country for the county line gang, giving him enough money to start a new life.
Ewan Gault's debut, The Sound of Sirens is a tough, modern crime novel, presenting the complexities of young life in a town at the end of the line.
-- Ewan Gault
