A test drive into the unknown

Ronnie Scott Dodd has immediate priorities: the racing pages, the rent and the possibility of selling a car. At the beginning of Tehrun, a thin man examining his stock appears to be the sort of interruption Ronnie needs. A customer might turn a slow day into a useful one.

The scene takes its time over Ronnie’s calculations. How interested is the man? How much should he ask? Can he complete the sale and still get to the bookmaker? These are the small questions that make the larger change in his circumstances feel so unsettling.

When the other person knows too much

The test drive moves the encounter away from the forecourt and beyond Ronnie’s control. The prospective buyer is less interested in the car than Ronnie expects. He knows things about Ronnie’s business and family that a stranger should have no reason to know.

A conversation that seemed to call for salesmanship starts to require a very different kind of response. Ronnie can negotiate over an odometer or a price. His private history is harder to bargain with, particularly when he does not yet know what the other person wants.

A large world enters through a small door

Set against the upheaval of 1978, Tehrun brings a British used-car dealer and the reclusive former Hollywood star Deanna Durbin into an unlikely fictional story. Its opening offers a human scale for that wider setting. Before the political world comes fully into view, the reader has met a man trying to get through his working day.

That makes the novel an inviting choice for readers who like intrigue carried by character and conversation. The tension begins with a familiar social situation: two people in a car, each trying to work out what the other is withholding. Ronnie’s evasions and quick judgements give the encounter its humour as well as its uncertainty.

Read the opening below, then continue into Tehrun to discover what the stranger’s visit sets in motion.