Young Adam

Joe is a drifter who works as a hired hand on a barge traveling the Forth and Clyde Canal between Edinburgh and Glasgow. As the story opens, he finds the corpse of a young woman drifting downstream. Was it an accident? Suicide? Murder? As the police investigate and arrest a suspect, it becomes apparent that Joe knew the dead woman and has more information than he's telling. Meanwhile, an unspoken attraction has developed between Joe and the wife of the barge skipper.

This first novel by Scottish beat writer Alexander Trocchi is an absorbing existential thriller - a lost gem of world literature reminiscent of Camus, Bukowski, and Burroughs.