This is a debut novel by a Scottish author which was published in 2007 by independent publishers Two Ravens Press.

The plot is set against the real events of the Bologna massacre (’strage di Bologna’ ) when a terrorist bomb exploded in the waiting room of the city’s train station on 2nd August 1980, claiming the lives of 85 people and injuring a further 200. As someone who has lived in Emilia Romagna for the past 11 years, I can vouch for the fact that the topic he has chosen to present in a work of fiction is still a highly sensitive one, akin perhaps to how the Irish would regard a novel set in Omagh in 1998 or the English if the backdrop were the Birmingham pub bombings of 1974.
The perpetrators of this atrocity have never been found but the BBC’s archives section reports that it is widely believed that the attack was carried out by right-wing extremists, probably with the motive of turning public opinion against the ‘Red Brigade’ (Brigate Rosse) . This theory is not one Dorward presents to the reader since it is the communists who are behind the attrocity using a seedy bar, the Usignol(the translation of which gives the novel its title) to plot their campaign.
Dorward says the idea for the novel came from a friend of a friend who was in Bologna at the time of the explosion, and significantly, when asked what he wanted to achieve with the novel, he does not comment on the political angle but instead says: “I wanted to explore ideas of responsibility: what happens when you have to face, in adulthood, the consequences of the actions of the youth that you have turned your back on, and the need, in adulthood, to stay loyal to the naïve, idealistic, selfish, plain stupid, youth, who made you what you are“.

Despite this, his fictionalised take on the events includes the kidnapping and murder of a top politician, a clear reference to the similar fate that befell Aldo Moro. Dorward gives the politician another name but the names of those killed in the strage are not changed. The victims are listed near the conclusion of the novel as a way to emphasise the human tragedy behind the headlines. The novel is, therefore, at times an uneasy combination of fact and fiction and I felt that Dorwood was on firmer terrain when the focus was on the main character, Don – whose libido, naivity and recklessness gets him in a situation where he is hopelessly out of his depth.

The structure of the novel is to divide the perspective between that of Don and his estranged daughter Rose so we switch from the present time back to 1980 . Rose probes awkwardly as an inexperienced journalist to get some insight into the cause and effect of the bombing, mainly as a means of understanding how her father got implicated in these events. It is,however, Don’s recollections that lie at the heart of the novel and Dorward keeps you guessing right up to the end as to how far he was involved and what the consequences of this are.
What remains less clear is the writer’s perspective on Italy and the Italians. Although Dorward handles the historic events respectfully, I would have preferred it if his treatment of Italians had been a little less stereotypical . In one section Don and the woman he befriends are in small town bar where the barman is twice described as having black “oily hair and pencil moutache”, while two other punters have “greasy black jackets” and even the tables have “greasy, red and white checked covers”. These seem clichéd observations and some more careful editing would have eliminated these distractions.
However, this is an impressive first novel and works as a kind of thriller in disguise. I’d be interested to read more by this writer, perhaps on a subject closer to his Scottish homeland.