Out Of Time — Paul Davis

It's the summer of 1985 and just like the weather, the Dublin Mod scene is at its hottest. The sounds of The Jam, The Style Council, The Who, Small Faces, The Specials, The Beat and Sixties Soul and Motown can be heard pouring from speakers in bedrooms and gardens throughout the city, as teenage boys and girls, dressed in their finest Sixties inspired clothes gear up for one of the biggest nights of the year - The Bubbles Mod Night allnighter. Fuelled on amphetamines and hormones, their only interests are dancing to Mod, Soul and Ska music, and getting together with that certain boy or girl who's been throwing them the eye for weeks in their favourite back street club, Bubbles, on Adair Lane. Driving their Vespas and Lambrettas through the city streets, dressed in mohair suits and packing themselves into pubs and clubs to see their favourite band, The Blades and dance to their favourite music is their only concern, but a certain, psychotic Dublin gangster has other ideas. The action takes place over four days at the end of May in 1985 and sees Jools and her group of friends finding themselves on the receiving end of death threats from Freddie Collins; gangster, drug lord and all round headcase. Robbo, tricked into selling speed for the crime boss, loses Freddie's money and now he's in the psycho's cross hairs. Literally. Freddie is going round Dublin, waving a shotgun under the noses of anyone who can help him track down the group of Mods he's looking for. With the tension building over the four days and the friends trying to get through it all, Jools bears the weight of everything and is struggling to keep everyone safe, but Freddie's too far gone now and she knows not everyone will make it out of this alive. The decisions she makes could put the ones she loves the most at risk and she may have to choose who lives. Could you? Out Of Time is not just a book about Mods and scooters and fashion, it's a story of friendship and the lengths we'll go to in order to protect the ones we love. For anyone who was a Mod in the mid-eighties, Out Of Time will resonate with you and take you back to a place and time that was special. It's a story about youthful exuberance and that titanium attitude that nothing can hurt you when you're young. Pulling every second of enjoyment out of life and just living in the moment. With all the detail of a finely tailored, mohair suit, it's a nod to a scene and a group of people who are still around today, and that bond, formed in the darkness of a small teenage dance club off Fleet Street in Dublin, is as strong now as it was thirty-five years ago. Drugs. Gangsters. Music. Murder. Mods. He's out to kill. She's out of time.