Cola Boy

by Ryan Battles

The year is 1996. 24-year-old Jimmy Irvine quits the tombstone grey skies of Scotland for the sun-kissed beaches of Dubai. A news reporter and small-time club DJ, Jimmy soon becomes exposed to the city’s underbelly of organised crime - a seedy world which has infiltrated the cabin crew of an Arabian airline.

Strict sharia laws govern the country where premarital sex is a crime, homosexuality illegal, drugs sentences severe and censorship is regularly imposed across the media. But Jimmy is not subservient to authority. He is hell-bent on pushing boundaries, finding the scoops and daring to organise Dubai’s first desert rave, whatever the consequences.

324 pages, Paperback

Published March 11, 2022

About the author

Ryan started his passion for writing at 21 when he launched a music and fashion fanzine in his home city of Aberdeen.

He then went onto to become a qualified journalist writing for national newspapers in the UK and in the United Arab Emirates. He was on the tail end of the Second Summer of Love, heading to Ibiza for the first time in 1990 and like so many came back with a different outlook on life. From then on, he DJ'd and promoted several nights and today runs the 'POV' vinyl only event in London.

Reviews

[Louis Battles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great entertaining read!

[Olivia Alter · Rating 1 out of 5]

The writing is poor and the characters have no depth. It felt like it hadn’t been edited and came straight from someone’s mind onto paper. About 2/3 through it switches in random chapters written in the third person, in order for you to be given very clear and obvious information about what is happening in other characters’ worlds rather than building the story out with intrigue and tension, felt clunky. And even once you do know stuff, some storylines are left unexplored, some are abandoned at strange points, like the other characters didn’t care about a pretty tragic situation, and some are picked up again but still not seen through satisfactorily. It ends abruptly so obviously the author wants you to be intrigued enough to continue with the sequel, but I just don’t care to go through this again.

[Rachael Stevely · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this book. Being from Aberdeen it's a real trip down memory lane and pulls on my home sick heart strings, but it's also a tense thriller, loads of intrigue and adventure, plenty of humour and the characters are all likable and ring true, even the dodgy ones. I'm wondering how much of it is autobiographical because it's so well written and believable, it reads like one man's journey into the unknown. It's a rollicking read, in any case, for anyone, but in particular for aabody fae Aiberdeen, it's ace, min. Irvine Welsh, eat yer heart oot.

[Ricky Sherriff-Short · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not totally convinced on the main character or some of the others to be fair. The airline closely resembles Emirates and don't know enough air stewards working out of the middle east to check for accuracy.
The clubbing scene is fairly accurate based on my recollection of the 90's but the book jumped about a bit to much with a bit of a chaotic flow and abrupt ending. Apparently another to follow.
I thought this was going to be the equivalent to human traffic but sadly not.