Victor Ridley

Out Skerries is a minuscule archipelago of the United Kingdom located in Scotland, to the east of the Shetland Islands, in the middle of the North Sea. A few years ago, the fish farm—the island’s main economic resource and the only company offering the possibility of a job—went bankrupt. Then the government closed the secondary school. The archipelago’s population went from 70 to about 20 inhabitants… Julie Powis Arthur is one of the women who remained. Her husband, then her eldest son, had to leave their house for the Mainland and only rarely come back.

With a heavy haul of 250 kilograms of gold bullion, the grizzled criminal mastermind, Rhino, and his ruthless gang of cutthroats, head to a ramshackle retreat somewhere in the Mediterranean to lay low on a scorching day of July. However, the unexpected and rather unwelcome arrival of the bohemian writer, Bernier, his muse, Luce, along with a pair of no-joke gendarmes further complicates things, as the frail allegiances will soon be put to the test.