TWO brothers are forced to put their seismic differences aside to try and retrieve the stolen coffin of their younger brother in the debut novel by Kevin Scott.

Pete and Matt live on opposite ends of the social scale but are forced together after their 11-year-old brother Nicky is tragically killed in a car accident.

When Nicky’s coffin, complete with his body, goes missing, Matt has just over 24 hours to cough up the £20,000 he owes a Glasgow gangster or risk breaking the news to his grieving mother.

Middle brother Pete, a successful hedge fund manager, lives in London and has the money needed to bring the body back draped over his wrist – but he has his own issues to deal with.

Still grappling with old resentments and betrayals, the two men must find a way to put the past behind them and find common ground.

As the two worlds of banking London and gangland Glasgow collide, readers are left wondering if they are really that different.

Author and business journalist Kevin Scott, all too familiar with the world of finance, is wondering the same thing.

“People have this idea of bankers and of people who are unemployed who are in the bookies at 11 o’clock in the morning”, Scott says.

“Hopefully the book will let readers see that there’s more to these people and why they’re in the position they’re in. 

“Perhaps they’re not all that different.

“There’s motivational differences but circumstances can dictate a lot about where you end up.

“When it comes to the banking thing, people are put up on a pedestal when maybe they shouldn’t be.”

With the tragedy of Grenfell Tower still dominating the political agenda, issues with inequality are weighing heavy on people’s minds.

Although Dead Cat Bounce was written more than two years ago, the train of thought that Scott has tapped into is more relevant than ever.

Instead of forcing readers to address the difficult questions head on, he puts them in an everyday context.

“One of the brothers is a bit of a mess, unemployed, and has a bit of an alcohol problem and a gambling problem.

“The other one, younger, is a hugely successful trader in the city. It’s looking at parallels.

“Is trading like that a kind of gambling. Pete gets embroiled in insider trading, so are they more alike than they think? Ultimately you have to decide which one is right or wrong, or are they in fact the same.

“Bankes are gamblers of a sort. 

“They would say that they are skilled because they know a lot about companies and read a lot of reports.

“What about the guy who reads the Racing Post who can tell you which horse is going to win today?

“50/50 gambling is a total punt but there’s a lot of people who know what they’re doing.

“A lot of people get themselves into difficulty because of gambling, which is a serious societal issue and the banking crisis was a really, really serious societal issue, so again you can draw parallels.

“It’s looking at the way society is falling apart and this gap in equality and the increase of inequality.

“These two people grew up in the same house, to the same parents. They’ve got similar traits but have gone different ways.”

The morbid idea of a child’s coffin being stolen is made less bleak by the use of dark comedy which Scott attributes to the Scottish mentality.
“It’s a difficult thing to make light of”, he explains.

“You’re either going to do something that’s dark or you’re going to try and make it funny. 

“I tried to make more light of the situation. 

“While it’s a morbid tale, we tried to find a bit of humour which I guess is a bit of the Scottish mentality.

“As a country we’ve got a dark sense of humour.

“If you look at authors like Irvine Welsh who manages to take something like heroin abuse, which is a serious issue, and make it a real thing with a comedic aspect.”

The title, Dead Cat Bounce, is a nod to the finance world inhabited by Pete and an indication of how the plot might go.

Stemming from the idea that even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from a great height, it describes a brief recovery in the price of a declining stock.

As Scott puts it: “It’s not quite on the floor yet and people think there may be a bit of recovery so they buy into it.

“So there’s a bit of recovery but ultimately it fails. It represents Matt, the main character’s, life. 

“It’s a metaphor for the fact that he’s on the way down, but you don’t know whether he will get back up.”

Since undergoing a Masters degree in Creative Writing at Glasgow University in 2011, Scott has worked primarily on short stories, alongside his day job as a journalist for The Herald.

While his career in journalism has given him an insight into the infamous world of business, the book gave him a desire to go deeper.

“It flowed more naturally, going into the trading side and finding out about his life in the city.

“It was something I really wanted to write about. 

“I spoke to a few guys in the city who do that role.

“I read a few books and engorged myself on online research.

“I read about the financial crisis and trading before I embarked on that half.

“These people are human beings but they live in a very different world from the rest of us.

“I learned a lot about that world and hopefully people who read it will learn a lot as well and how it operates.”

Dead Cat Bounce by Kevin Scott is available now. (Thunderpoint, RRP £9.99)