The Dark Pool: Black Gold, High Finance, and Love in the Scottish Highlands by Liz Cochrane

978-1-62857-234-6-LCochraneCoverAbout the Book

The Interview: 

Q: What made you write this book in the first place?

L.C. I was one of a group of ex-patriots, Talking about the referendum for Scottish Independence. Somebody remarked: “What a pity Scotland never found oil on the mainland.” And I said, “A pity? I’m glad we didn’t. It would have led to the Highland Clearances all over again.”  Then two people asked “What were the Highland Clearances?” Those two people were Scots, and I was horrified and astonished that they’d never heard of the Clearances, when thousands of people were literally thrown off their patches of farmland and out of their homes to make way for sheep.  I said, “I’ll write a book to tell you about it.”

Now, I knew the straightforward History had been written extremely well by John Prebble. I couldn’t do better than Prebble, so I thought about fiction, set in the Clearances. But that had been done too, by Nigel Tranter. So, I came up with a novel about a historian who is writing a book on the Clearances when suddenly her thoughts are jolted into the 21st century by the discovery of oil on the mainland. When householders in Crannog, the historic village where she is researching her book, are issued with Compulsory Purchase Orders, she realises that almost the entire village will be demolished to make way for an oil pipeline.

What could the people do about it? The answer to that was actually the easiest bit of my research. Oil geology proved a lot harder. 

And of course I had to have a hero — an unusual hero; and several villains – the terrorists who are out to kill the hero, and the less obvious “nice guy” who is anything but nice.

An exciting finale — a terrorist attack on the NATO base at Blairhyle followed by a courthouse battle – the community’s Action Group v. the government. Can they save the villages?

The novel’s title – The Dark Pool: Black Gold, High Finance, and Love in the Scottish Highlands – says it all!

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