Badlands opens with the horror of a man gradually waking to find himself fully and sharply dressed on a hotel bed in the Highlands with no memory of who he is or how he got there. And he is not alone, a secondary horror which drives him to seek the help of a girl in a pub before he takes off on a flight through the landscape in search of answers and an identity.

The plot is sustained by these two characters, the amnesiac man stumbling around the countryside and the girl in the pub, herself a stranger on a quest to unlock family secrets that are rooted in Vienna. Their paths cross and divide, stirring up fresh revelations that heighten the tension on the road to resolution.

“Badlands is a rollercoaster of a yarn in the tradition of John Buchan, with a fast-paced plot full of deceptions, dangers, murders, bluffs and blurred identities, and power games being played out against a backdrop of Highland landscapes and castles and luxurious Vienna apartments. But Deirdre Chapman uses the events of this adventure story to make some serious points about contemporary politics and society, and how historic secrets, apparently long forgotten, can raise their heads and cause fresh mayhem decades later.” – James Robertson