The Day Before Tomorrow

In the fast disappearing slums of the Claggans district of a big Scottish city, only a few tenements still stand. In this strange half-world a small group of men and women live out one hot summer week of their lives. Experience is heightened by the presence of a maniac among them - a man whom some of them at least must know, a sex killer who already has his eye on his next victim and is planning to strike again. But this is in no way a whodunit. It is a warm and human story of the loves, fears and hopes of simple people: of Mrs Sheehan, feeling lost and useless with her family grown up and gone; of old Pat Brady and his sons in the neglected, womanless apartment opposite, tossed in cross-currents of pity, love and hate; of Eugene Carty, tied to a tyrannical invalid mother, whose problems have an unexpected end; of young Bernadette Sheehan, whose return home after eighteen months working in London, dramatically changes the course of several lives. Moira Burgess has drawn on her own experience while working as a librarian in Glasgow to create the lives and background of her characters, and her natural powers as a storyteller to weave these into a convincing whole.