Press Release for "The Poisonous Past"

‘THE POISONOUS PAST’

A NEW NOVEL BY MARK FRANKLAND

AUGUST 2005

Four years ago a book called ‘The Cull’ turned the life of a Dumfries author on its head in many ways. The dark and gripping storyline lifted the lid on the chronic heroin problem that has taken hold in the rural South West of Scotland. ‘The Cull’ has now sold in excess of 20,000 copies nationwide. Many Dumfries parents consider the book to be essential reading for their teenage children, and the fact that over 5000 copies of the book have been sold in a town with a population of little over 40,000 is testimony to the impact it has made.

Since ‘The Cull’ was released, Mark and his partner Carol have opened The First Base Agency, a drug charity in the town centre.

“We used the money from ‘The Cull’ to open First Base and the last couple of years have been an unbelievable eye opener. The misery and desperation that comes in through the door every day defies belief in a small place like this. To be honest, it has been a pretty constant battle. Because we try and tell the community the truth about how bad things are, most of the big organisations reckon we’re whistleblowers and do what they can to get rid of us. And the community don’t always want to know either. I get called a ‘Junkie Lover’ in the supermarket! We have a great big poster of Martin Luther King on the wall to keep us straight.”

After ‘The Cull’, Mark’s next two novels delved some of the murkier corners of modern Scotland. ‘Terrible Beauty’ showed sectarian violence on the streets of Glasgow whilst ‘Red Zone’ was set amidst the 8000 asylum seekers in the Sighthill Estate. Now ‘The Poisonous Past’ is another book that paints a picture of Dumfries never seen on the postcards. This time Frankland shines a light on the plight of the young people in the town. Dumfries and Galloway now has by far and away the greatest number of teenagers addicted to heroin in Scotland. Recent Executive figures showed that a staggering 7% of those between 15 and 25 are now heroin users. His message is unequivocal: the currant policies of tough policing, community wardens and lack of anything to do are driving teenagers into the arms of local drug dealers in ever increasing numbers.

“The way we are treating our young people at the moment defies belief. If Arab terrorists are Public Enemy Number One, then teenagers come a pretty close second as Public Enemy Number Two. The fact the deputy Prime Minister is seriously considering banning people from public places for no other reason than their age and the fact they have a hood on their jackets really says it all. They used to take a similar view of the world in South Africa, although it was skin colour rather than wearing a hoodie that got you excluded in shopping malls in Pretoria . There are parts of our town where being a teenager is pretty similar to being black in Apartheid South Africa. It’s not allowed to gather in a group of three or four mates for a chat on a sunny afternoon any more: you get moved on!”

“What amazes me is how well the youngsters are taking being treated in this way. I grew up in an era of demonstrations and riots. In those days there was a feeling that a part of being young was all about fighting what you thought was wrong. In my teens and early twenties I saw this kind of agitation drive the Americans from Vietnam. At times, it seemed like the streets were forever filled with broken glass as massive demonstrations against nuclear bombs, unemployment, Poll Tax, freeing Nelson Mandela and a host of other causes shook up those in power. When the big demos took to the streets in the run to the Iraq war, I couldn’t help but be struck by how polite and middle aged they were. Where were the young people?”

“Every day we see youngsters come into the Agency for food parcels in a woeful state. Homeless, hungry and often locked into heroin addiction. A lost generation is being quietly created under our noses and nobody seems to care much. The only solutions we seem to come up with are ASBO’s, firmer policing and community wardens to move people on. ‘The Poisonous Past’ is all about what might happen when young people eventually get completely fed up with being treated like lepers: like they did twenty five years ago. We are all very mistaken if we assume they stay quiet and docile forever.”

The story follows the life of Lenny Baxter. In 1984 he is involved in the great Miner’s Strike. He is at the very heart of a fight that becomes increasingly savage as the government deploys shadowy forces into the battlefield of South Yorkshire.
Twenty years later Lenny is once again at war, this time at the centre of a campaign for a new youth centre in Dumfries. As the situation escalates, Lenny once again becomes a target for those tasked to make sure that things never go back to the dark days of the angry eighties.

“Obviously ‘The Poisonous Past’ is fiction and I hope people will enjoy turning the pages. But I feel the book does carry an important message. If we keep treating young people this badly, one day they are going to stop taking it on the chin and start to get angry. At risk of sounding corny, we should remember that young people are the future, and all our future’s will be that much darker if we maintain this crazy policy of treating them as the enemy.”

Press Release for "The Long And Winding Road To Istanbul"

When the referee at last put an end to the ultimate misery of the six minutes of added time at the end of Liverpool’s epic semi final clash with Chelsea, the same thought entered the minds of umpteen thousand followers of the reds. Istanbul. How do I make it? How can I afford it? What route do I take? On the day of the match, UEFA liberally plastered the host city in ‘The road to Istanbul’ banners which seemed to hang from very lamppost. There were 45,000 individual roads to Istanbul that gave birth to 45,000 stories. The great red crusade was a journey over air, land and sea that took in just about every country in the Balkan peninsula. By hook or by crook, the extraordinary fans who the media had come to refer to as Liverpool’s ‘twelfth man’ made the 1705 mile trip to completely dominate the crescent shaped concrete bowl of the Ataturk Stadium.
Author Mark Frankland faced the same problem as all the others who made the trip.

“When people go on about poverty stricken writers, they aren’t exaggerating! My first thought was that I was going and that was that. Then I started working out what it would cost and decided there was no chance. Then I thought of my two lads who are nineteen and thirteen and how they had never known the glory years like I had. So the credit cards got maxed up and we went.”

Mark took the road to Istanbul with a unique theory on how to try and pay for the trip.

“Every day the news is dominated by the problems between East and West; Christianity and Islam. On the one hand there are guys in mosques firing up young lads to be suicide bombers. On the other hand there is Bush and Blair and a hundred and fifty thousand soldiers in Iraq. For four thousand years the East has met the West in Istanbul. And now 45,000 thousand Scousers were about to be parachuted right into the middle of it all. It seemed like there simply HAD to be a book in it somewhere. Little did I know! What amuses met as an authoris that if I had made the story up I would have been a laughing stock. 45,000 Reds make it to Istanbul and watch their team come back from three down at half time against AC Milan to win on penalties. Yeah right ”

Once he returned from the final and got down to work, Frankland began to get a feel for how his story should unfold.

“There was so much that reminded me of the first Rome final. It occurred to me that my own road to Istanbul probably started 28 years ago with that ‘Joey eats Frogs Legs’ banner and the whole St Etienne thing and Tommy Smith scoring in the final. That was the start. Istanbul was the end because we got to keep the trophy. That’s why I decided to kick off the lives of my characters in 1977 and follow their lives all the way to 2005 through the five European Cup finals. Hence ‘The long and winding road to Istanbul’. The story is a twenty eight year road!”
Like all Frankland’s books, ‘The long and winding road to Istanbul’ is a fast moving, page turning thriller. The author is however keen to point out that he hopes the story carries an important theme.

“For me, one of the biggest things about the final was how things went all the way to the wire. Of course that was how things were on the pitch. But things seemed to have gone to the wire off the pitch as well. Would Carlsberg have walked if we had lost three nil? And Reebok? And Stevie G? It doesn’t bear thinking about, but we might have been on the brink of doing a Leeds. Then I realised that it wasn’t just Liverpool the football club that had gone to the wire, but the whole city. The eighties couldn’t have been a much darker time, especially when the whole Yosser Hughes thing disintegrated into the complete nightmare of Hillsborough and Heysel. Not many would have given Liverpool a chance in those days. Now look at the place. European City of Culture and wall to wall cranes from the Liver building to the Albert Dock. In a way, it is as big a comeback as the one the lads managed in the final. In the book, my main character goes all the way down and the Final becomes his last chance of redemption. Just like the team and the club and the city.”

Writing a book about his beloved team is nothing new for Frankland who has been a season ticket holder since 1971. In 2000, his book ‘The Drums of Anfield’ received nationwide attention for the way it addressed issues of racism. The book is now widely used in schools across the city and Liverpool FC had it converted into a play which was performed at Anfield to thousands of local schoolchildren. The story is now about to become a major feature film which will be shot on location on Merseyside and in South Africa. ‘The long and winding road to Istanbul’ is Frankland’s ninth book and the one he has enjoyed writing the most.

“People often say that authors should write about what they are passionate about. The research for lots of my books has been a pretty grim affair. I’ve spent time in Belfast talking with IRA and UDA guys, time up in a Glasgow sink estate with asylum seekers and lots of time in the darker corners of the heroin world. As you can imagine, researching this book was just a bit better – it involved going to Anfield for thirty four years and taking the road to Istanbul! There is nothing quite like being a Liverpool fan over this period. We’re talking the highest of highs and the very lowest of lows. Nothing could ever be higher that being in the Ataturk stadium on that night in May. And of course nothing could ever plumb the depths of being in the Leppings Lane End at Hillsborough back in 1989. That is what makes being a Liverpool fan so unique. I don’t think the lads would have done what they did had all of us lot not belted out ‘You’ll never walk alone’ at half time. And without Hillsborough, I don’t suppose we could have sung the song in the way that we did. It was probably something only Liverpool supporters could ever understand. When you have seen ninety six of your fellow fans die in front of your eyes, it makes being three nil down in a Cup Final something you can deal with. In the end we all came through and what happened can never be taken away. I hope ‘The Long and Winding Road to Istanbul’ captures the event and does it justice.”

Press Release for "Red Zone"

Ever since the two jumbo jets thumped into the Twin Towers we have become obsessed by the threat of terrorism. Our government warns all of us to maintain a constant state of vigilance. We are told never to lower our guard. Where will the next attack come from? This of course is the key question. The accusing gaze of much of the media has inevitably fallen on the thousands of asylum seekers who make their way across our frontiers every year. Subconsciously we have all begun to make the link between refugees and terrorists.

In his newly released novel, 'Red Zone', author Mark Frankland examines this assumption. Frankland's last novel, 'Terrible Beauty', won critical acclaim on both sides of the water for the way that it got under the skin of Irish terrorism. In 'Red Zone' the author takes his readers on a terrifying journey through the bloody nightmare of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. In a frighteningly real plot, he brings a PLO fighter to the streets of Glasgow. His character comes to Scotland under the guise of an asylum seeker and easily looses himself in the midst of the 6000 other refugees who are packed into the grim high rise blocks of Glasgow's Sighthill district.

'Red Zone' leaves the reader with much to consider. Once again Frankland has created a story that grips and haunts his reader to the last sentence. He examines the oppression and pain that drives men down the path of terror. Time spent by the author both in the tower blocks of Sighthill and the bullet scarred streets of Israel's West Bank give the book a haunting reality. In the end the reader is left with a sense of unease. Is 'Red Zone' merely a hard hitting piece of fiction ? Or is 'Red Zone' a vision of what is about to happen on the streets of our cities ?

Press Release for "Terrible Beauty"

In the summer of 2000 Mark Frankland released a football adventure story for children called 'The Drums of Anfield'. Little did he know of the strange journey he was about to embark on. What started as a simple adventure story written for his two boys ended with Mark being guided around the deserted late night streets of Portadown with an armoured Police Land Rover in close attendance.

It was the way that 'The Drums of Anfield' dealt with issues of racism that ensured that the book soon achieved national publicity. It is now widely used in schools on Merseyside and it is imminently about to become a feature film in which Nelson Mandela is set to play the part of himself.

Following the success of the 'The Drums of Anfield', Mark was commissioned by the 'Sense over Sectarianism Partnership' to write a Scottish version. The result is 'The Drums of Hampden' which was launched at Hampden Park in September with Old Firm players in attendance. The project enabled 2100 copies of the book to be distributed to High Schools across the Glasgow area. The story is already attracting positive comments. Craig Brown called it "A gripping story with an important message" whilst Alex McCleish said "The book will surely help in the battle to steer the next generation from the path of prejudice." The author has been more than happy with the feedback that he has received. "I suppose that the best indication that the book is on the right tracks is that the BNP had allocated a full page of their website to it! They are even launching a campaign 'against the latest sick attempt by the liberal left establishment to brainwash young people in schools.' If that's the way the BNP feel I must be doing a decent job."

Researching the book took Mark into deeply unfamiliar territory. "At first it seemed odd that I should be given this job. I'm Lancashire born and bred and I have absolutely no religion. But maybe that makes me the perfect choice. I have absolutely no axe to grind. The people at 'Sense over Sectarianism' got me a ticket for an Old Firm game and it was a real eye opener. I've been to stacks of Liverpool v Man United games over the years, and I can assure you that there is no love lost. But this was on a whole different level. You get a sense of it on TV, but you have to be there to hear all the sectarian songs and see all the paramilitary paraphernalia. It was unbelievable."

Mark's research soon took him across the water to Ulster and once started he couldn't stop. "I suppose I got sucked in. I ended up doing much, much more than I ever needed for 'The Drums of Hampden'. The sheer depth of sectarian hatred was quite stunning. And then they drove the planes into the Twin Towers and it occurred to me that the event was powered by the same dark forces - a sectarian outrage driven by intense religious hatred, only it was Moslem against Christian as opposed to Protestant against Catholic. It was at this point that I started to wonder if the sectarian tensions in Ulster and Glasgow could ever boil over so far that we could suffer our very own 9/11."

The result is Mark's stunning new novel 'Terrible Beauty' which is on general release this week. It tells the story of the thirty year countdown to a monstrous terrorist outrage on the streets of Glasgow on July 12th 2003. It tells the story of two men from West Belfast as they are irrevocably sucked into their country's endless war. One travels the road of the IRA. The other joins the UVF. "It must have taken the men who piloted the planes that attacked the Twin Towers years and years to come to the place where that seemed to be the only way to fight back. I wanted to look at what might happen if the sectarian pot boiled over and Glasgow had its very own 9/11. I wanted to follow the lives of fictional characters to see if I could understand how men come to do these things. Nothing ever happens overnight. Far from it."

The story is a compelling mix of fact and fiction as the reader is carried through the seminal events of the Irish War at breakneck speed - the riots of 1969, the Battle of Ballymurphy, Internment, Bloody Sunday, The Hunger Strike, Loughgall. Mark's extensive research included talking with senior ex paramilitaries which means that the reader gets a unique insight into what drove so many men to do things that they did. Mark makes no apologies for the apocalyptic end to the book.

"I expect to get lots of stick. No doubt everyone will say that the story is way over the top. We're always very good at saying 'it could never happen here'. No doubt the people of Sarajevo and Gaza and Ahmedabad said much the same once upon a time. History shows us the terrible consequences of sectarian hatred. I hope that 'Terrible Beauty' is no more than a fictional thriller. And I fervently hope that it indeed couldn't ever happen here. Don't we all. But we would be very foolish indeed not to accept the fact that it might."

Press Release for "The Cull"

They always say the lightning never strikes twice. Dumfries author Mark Frankland certainly wishes that this was the case. In 1996 Mark was a Director of his family's highly successful animal feed business. The turnover had reached £18,000,000 a year and there were over seventy people on the payroll. Then the government of the day announced that BSE in cattle was linked to CJD in humans and the business was bankrupted within months.

Unemployed and penniless, Mark channelled the rage that he felt about what had happened, and put pen to paper to write his first novel. The result was a fast moving thriller called 'One Man's Meat' which exposed the massive damage that had been caused by the government's crass and fumbled handling of the crisis. The book received national media attention and helped the author to get back on his feet.

Having been ruined once by agriculture, Frankland decided to get as far away from the industry as he could. Using the proceeds from the first novel, Mark and his partner, Carol, opened the Artist's Café in Dumfries. After a year all seemed to be going well until yet another agricultural disaster came along to kick them in the teeth. This time it was the Foot and Mouth Crisis.

Along with hundreds of other businesses across the region, The Artist's Café now faces imminent ruin. "We will probably just about make it through Christmas, then who knows?" Says Frankland. "Basically, the whole of the local economy has more or less collapsed."

Once again Mark has turned farming catastrophe into gripping fiction. This time he has used the Foot and Mouth Crisis as the backdrop for his new dark and harrowing thriller, 'The Cull.' The books tells the story of a dairy farmer who has the worst day imaginable. In the course of a few hours he witnesses the slaughter of his herd of cows and then he receives the news that his only son has died of a massive heroin overdose. Driven by rage and grief, he sets out to take his revenge on the drug gangs of the town.

"The book is about lots of things." Says the author. "Of course it is about the devastating impact that Foot and Mouth has had on our region. I hope it highlights the dreadful state that many of our country areas now find themselves in. Take a walk around the town and you can see what is happening - shops are boarded up, unemployment is rocketing, and the drugs problem is getting way out of hand. Heroin is the biggest business in this town by a country mile. There are over 2000 addicts out of a population of 40,000 or so, just imagine the damage this causes - rising crime, ruptured families, young people's lives broken beyond repair.

'The frightening thing is that nobody ever talks about it. It is a growing catastrophe that we are trying to sweep under the carpet because everyone is scared to death of frightening off the tourists. The trouble is that in the end the lid will get blown clean off. Too many parents are terrified for their kids. Sadly, the police find themselves more or less helpless. The law is weighted too much on the side of the criminals. One day people are going to take the law into their own hands and then who knows what will happen. That is what the book is all about. It's not just about what might happen; it's about what probably will happen. I hope it puts what is happening out into the light where people can see it."

'The Cull' is a fast moving and often disturbing book that will leave very few readers unaffected.