Red Alert

by Margaret Thomson Davis

Red Alert is the story of the Price family and is set in a Glasgow fire station and in the world-famous Glasgow School of Art. Kirsty Price is a nice, ordinary girl and works in the fire station serving food and drink to the firefighters. She's happy in her work and her life except for the fact that she's also the daughter of Simon Price, an artist and tutor at the Glasgow School of Art. He is a notorious bully, both to his students and his family, including Kirsty and her brother Johnny who is plagued with ill-health. When Johnny starts hanging around with a dubious couple who work as croupiers in the local casino he accepts a job from them looking after their flat and Kirsty and her firefighter boyfriend, Greg McFarlane, start to worry about him. Then Greg phones to say that he has been attending a fatal road traffic accident and the car involved is Johnny's. The family is devastated but soon after Johnny's funeral, there's a knock at the door and Kirsty staggers back in shock when she sees who's standing in the shadows outside. But it's just the start of a chain of events that will tear the Price family apart. Red Alert is the compelling story of a Glasgow family which, to the outside world, looks like any other normal family but is riven with tensions and problems which escalate into a nightmare for Kirsty, Greg and her family.

211 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 5, 2008

About the author

A prolific author, admired for her depiction of the Scottish working class communities.

Reviews

[Lynda Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really didn't enjoy this at all. I wanted to know what happened despite it all getting a little too farfetched and ridiculous, though, and it was a fast read. If it had been 100 pages more I'd have jacked it in.
It was way too Scottish as well. All very well if you ARE Scottish and know the lingo but I don't and I found it beyond tiresome to have to keep looking words up to know what they were on about. Things like "made a terrible fool of it" or "southern worthies" or "the ned" or "birling".....some I couldn't even trace on Google and it got very annoying.
Some of the writing seemed like it was more geared toward Young Adults rather than us older adults, I found, also. It was a little immature in places, I thought. There was also a great deal of repetitiveness which started to wear me down.
We didn't need to know all about Scotland and its cities, either, almost every turn, and the poetry really wasn't needed and I don't understand why it was included apart from perhaps a little self-indulgence although one did make me smile despite this.I did spot some words dropped out of sentences here and there and divers was used where drivers was supposed to be but there weren't any awful grammatical errors with apostrophes or anything.
As I say, the story rips along but it just wasn't the sort of thing I'd bother with again.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

All of her books I have read so far have been similar in that the plot is weak and the endings are even weaker. Her knowledge of Scottish history is good, so maybe writing something along the lines of an historic novel would be better.