Aidan J. McQuade

A story from behind the statistics, 25 Dec 2012

In 1937 the body of a young western woman, Pamela Werner, was found brutally murdered in Peking. An investigation was launched by Chinese police with British support but the murderer was never arrested and the crime was soon forgotten in the midst of the cataclysm of the second world war that engulfed China and the world thereafter.

Paul French, the author of this book, in the course of researching the case found that after the police investigation wound up, having been obstructed throughout by a combination of bureaucratic corruption, racism, sexual hypocrisy and imperial pretensions, Pamela's father conducted his own enquiries. These uncovered significant new evidence… Read more

The name is Bond, Jimmy Bond, 17 Dec 2012

Following the outstanding Casino Royale, and the dodgy Quantum of Solace, Daniel Craig returns for his third outing as Bond in Skyfall and it is a cracking return to form.

A hard drive of names of undercover Nato agents is stolen in an extremely violent operation in the course of which Bond goes missing, presumed dead. A few months later the disk is decrypted and the names released in batches of 5 to the press, leading to the capture and execution of some of those exposed.

Bond, not dead of course, but losing himself in drink and sex in an unnamed beach paradise, cannot escape his sense of duty and so returns to the battle to help retrieve the lost hard drive from the… Read more

Finding redemption through whisky, 17 Dec 2012

Robbie is a young criminal. He has already done time for a vicious, coked-up assault on a stranger, and now just misses prison by the skin of his teeth, instead being sentenced to 300 hours of community service for another assault. However he also has a pregnant girlfriend and is thoroughly ashamed of the harm he has caused others. So he is desperate to turn his life around. Harry, the community service supervisor, and Harry's appreciation of whisky, offers him an unexpected avenue for escape.

This movie is a peculiar hybrid: it has elements of realistic drama, in particular regarding the culture of violence amongst elements of the Glaswegian underclass; it also has elements of… Read more