Craig Douglas

This is an excellent insight into the oil industry from a Scottish point of view. In the late 1970s, early 1980s, The North Sea, the marine region on the North East side of Scotland,and the West of Norway was found to yield almost infinite quantities of oil, and oil rigs sprouted up like mushrooms. Craig Douglas - the author - found a job on offshore rigs ata a young age. Reading the book today makes a sensible person cringe, safety was almost non-existent, the quality of living was poor, but of course, the money was good - the old story. However the author saw a need for training courses, preferably on shore, but if necessary,off shore on the rigs themselves.
We the reader learn how he established his business, and the companies he worked for big and small. Tales of horrific injuries including one to himself. Then there were the crooks, some blatant, some not so blatant and some protected by the state.
The author's company consisted of his wife,his daughter, eventually his son and of course himself. Now he is retired and his son has taken up work relating to the oil industry.

This is a good book, it moves well between chapters, few errors to distract the reader, I read this on a Kindle, I would have liked some maps and maybe images of the types of rigs he talks about, however the photos in the book did come up well enough on my basic Kindle. Recommended.… (mehr)

It's not unusual for a pulp fiction story to feature a young innocent in
over his head and often on the run from the bad guys. In fact, it's kind
of a staple of this literature. Sim Palmer isn't that young and a little
too jaded and cynical to be innocent, particularly when he's popping
pills and drinking his way from one bar to the next. To be honest, no
one is all that innocent if they've been bouncing around Las Vegas for
a while.
What really works for this story is that Palmer isn't a cop or a private
eye. He's a reporter for a glossy weekly that exists for the purpose of
repeating PR statements and selling ads. It's not the investigative
reporting Palmer yearns for. And then one night he gets a real chance
at a real story, one he's going to pursue even though he's entered a
world of crime and viciousness he could scarcely have imagined.
Bad Luck City is novella-length and is a lot of fun to read. It's a trip
through the tawdry side of Sin City really worth taking… (mehr)