Runaway

When Jack Mackay gets expelled from school in 1965, he decides to run away with his four friends and band members. With a "borrowed" van they start their journey from Glasgow to London, with the goal of becoming a famous band there. Only reality has other plans. After some dramatic events in London Jack and two others return back home to Glasgow. Fifty years later, in 2015, one of them is terminally ill and has some unfinished business in London. And so the three old men decide to run away again, this time with Jack's grandson Ricky...

I enjoyed Runaway, it's well written and the switching between the two timelines keeps it interesting. Sometimes the story is funny, sometimes it's sad. And while there is a murder mystery in the prologue, it's absent from the main text until the very end.

Quotes from the book

[...] a face like milk left out in the sun.

"Bloody hell, mate, what have you been drinking? You look worse than me."

"Only blessing is that I've no kids to be ashamed of me."

"Only thing is... we've no transport." [...] "No!" he said firmly. "You're not borrowing my car." [...] "I don't want to borrow it. [...] I want to borrow you to drive it for us."

"Are you okay?" - "As okay as any dying man can be."

From that first night, when Jeff had seen rainbows coming out of the walls, he was lost to LSD.

"They're horrible. Unwashed. Rude. Scottish!"

"But unless you really want to watch me blow my brain out, I suggest you go now."