Christopher BrookmyreReseñas

From the backlist, this was the first one of Brookmyre's novels that I read. Absurd, dark, chaotic fun. I imagine it as a John Cusack movie in my head.

I picked this up on a trip through Heathrow airport. (At the time, fewer of his books were available in the US, so there was actually some reason there. ) Sometimes books make the best souvenirs. :)

Another fun read. Being a grandmother is no obstacle to kicking butt.

Well-written thriller, but deeply part of the current fashion for plots too complex for words. Do I care about any of these characters? Decidedly not.

Heavy hand

Way too many red herrings! The ending though was good.

Thank you to GoodReads for my review.

This novel introduced Jack Parlabane, who joined the ranks of Tartan Noir with quite a bang. On the run from a hit man in Los Angeles, where he had been working as an investigative journalist looking into financial crime, Parlabane returns to his native Scotland, and takes refuge in an Edinburgh apartment loaned to him by a friend. His timing is not great as while he is struggling to recover from the combined onslaught of a monster hangover and major jetlag, someone is murdered in the flat below. Still disoriented, Parlabane wanders out to see if he can borrow aspirin or something similar (and preferably much stronger) from a neighbour, and inadvertently locks himself out. Seeing that the door of one of the other flats is open, he wanders in, and finds himself in a particularly messy crime scene, with the resident murdered and the flat in mayhem. Just as he is attempting to climb through the widow back to his own flat, he is apprehended by the police, and taken in for questioning.

After such a spectacular and gripping start, the novel goes from strength to strength. I have always had a strong liking for any books set in Edinburgh, and this is a worthy addition to that already large genre. The plot is too convoluted for me to attempt a worthwhile synopsis, but it gripped me from the beginning, and never let go.

There is a strong element of the grotesque throughout the novel, although this does not detract from a very sound story.

it had some moments

An exclusive Scottish Island retreat is utilised for a hen party for old and new friends of a bride-to-be. Apart from their host and the chef they’ve hired for the weekend then the seven women should be alone and out of touch from the outside world for 72 hours. Seems like a good idea at the time but when a body is discovered and another member of their party is kidnapped they may have wished they’d stayed at home. Especially when they receive the ransom video saying that the kidnapped member will die unless a terrible secret is revealed because each of them has a secret they’d rather not be known. They must each decide if it’s worth letting someone die to keep it.

The last solo Brookmyre book that I read wasn’t his best and this one continues the trend (does 2 books constitute a trend?) in downward quality. Even though the characters are well drawn I just couldn’t care if they all made it off the island or not by the end of the book. The secrets are revealed slowly as the tale unfolds with alternating viewpoints and this may be some of the problem I had with the book. It’s sometimes easy to forget who’s who so there’s no real investment. The story itself is not a bad one but having read all his previous books I know the author can do better.

Gritty Glasgow combined with a personal story and introduction to Jasmine Sharp, Brookmyre’s young novice private detective. Alternating chapters describe her investigation in search of her uncle who is also her new boss, with that of police detective Catherine McLeod's inquiry into the illicit drugs business. As the story progresses their investigations eventually merge. This is a tightly plotted mystery that has the reader hooked from the first page. Tough without being bloody and with the natural ironic humour associated with Glasgow. I can't wait to read more Jasmine Sharp episodes.½

Enjoyed it very much but not to the point where I'm going to read everything Brookmyre has written..It was fun and an easy, fast read.

This audio book was part of my revisit of the entire Parlabane series so I was cheating a bit, having already done "all the emotions" over the opening line of the blurb.

I do get the idea of telegraphing the end of Jack and the whole Parlabane series was going to grab some attention. And I understand fully that being elected Rector of Kelvin University was a bit of a parting surprise. I can even get behind the idea that Parlabane going out in a blaze of psychic attention seeking was just the ticket for getting your average fan steamed up and in a take no prisoners mood. And I will admit that even on first reading I was firmly trying to convince myself that "this is Christopher Brookmyre right?" And there's that "Or is he?". Is that the sliver of light in an otherwise hefty cloud of "what the's"?

Book number five in the Jack Parlabane series, ATTACK OF THE UNSINKABLE RUBBER DUCK is a glorious / clever title, for a seriously good book. Good because he's launching an almighty forehand at the spoon bending fraternity, with a very nice backhand lob at the creationists along the way (it's Australian Open time / I might have heard some terminology floating around...). Good because I'm particularly partial to Christopher Brookmyre when he mounts his umpires chair and starts chucking some pointed commentary from on high. Good in that it's got it's moments of hilarity and sheer weirdness. Good because he really shouldn't be rector of Kelvin University, and yet he really could be a worthy one. Perhaps not quite so good because it does take a while to get going, which did stand out a lot more in audio than I remember on the page. Even better ultimately because it's a complex plot, with the return of some favourite characters (Spammy has to be one of the all time greats - and the narrator's voice for him in these books has been gold).

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/attack-unsinkable-rubber-duck-christophe...

A good example of how Jack Parlabane can entice even with a short story. Jack is hoping for a real news story instead of editing wire stories to fit the style of his current employer. And then he gets an opportunity he can't ignore.

An offbeat thriller with enigmatic characters and dizzying plot twists. Brookmyre is the master writing passages you think you understand … only to pull the rug on you. Surprise! You'd better re-read that last bit because it was not what you thought it was.

This one reminded me of Nick Harkaway's Angelmaker, one of my favourites.

I've started listening to audio versions of books I've already read while I work. So this isn't the first time I've read this book. But it's been a while.

Fifteen years after graduating, the students of St Michael's in Auchenlea (Glasgow) are invited to a reunion on a floating luxury resort in the North Atlantic. Simone is trapped in a loveless marriage to Gavin, the horrible owner of the horrible resort. Matt is … well … Billy Connolly. Davey is a reformed criminal. They expect an evening filled with metaphorical murders and fireworks – not literal ones.

I've adored Brookmyre's writing since 2000, when I bought Boiling a Frog from the Sleuth of Baker Street in Toronto because I liked the cover.

It's been so long since I read a Parlabane book. I've missed him.

I hope the rest of the series is as good as this one, which was fantastic! I relished the black humour, the characters, the Edinburgh setting, even the opening scene that was gross in its array of bodily fluids and yet had me laughing out loud. I loved the idiomatic words and phrases too. Thankfully, Brookmyre doesn't shy away from using them. Journalist Jack Parlabane is investigating why he was threatened at his last job in L.A. and had to leave the country, which led him to another story in Scotland. Are they connected? The newly formed National Health Service Trust is diverting money to the executive offices instead of hospitals. And diverting bodies too...

4.5 stars
First thing off the bat, in this book, this elite named Roland Voss is murdered. I want to say he's a Rupert Murdoch look alike. Reporting the news,
"Eventually, out of facts and out of quotes, they moved on to reaction, which in most cases was blank disbelief....
ordinary people got murdered. Poor people got murdered. Black people got murdered. Women got murdered. We don't get murdered.
Occasionally one of us manages to off himself by mistake with the wife's knickers over his head or gets found upside down in a septic tank after a share crash, but we don't get done in by the unwashed when we're trying to enjoy a spot of hunting and fishing in the countryside. We're safe from that sort of thing.
Aren't we?"
After I read this, I knew I was going to love this book. This is the second one I've read from this author, but it's been 8 years since I read the first one.

Tam McInnis, his son Paul, Tam's friend Robert, and Paul's friend Spammy, have been set up to take the fall for the murder of Voss. Tam McInnes had giving Nicole an envelope, before the Voss murder, telling her to hold on to it, and to open it if he did not come back after the weekend.
Nicole's boss Mr Campbell tells her the background behind Tam McInnis:
" 'he was a burglar. Not by profession, just by, well, a combination of circumstance, naivety and probably a bit of booze, in the first instance. He and his Pals robbed country mansions; you know that much. The first one was the home - a home - of the man who took the decision to close down the car plant where they had all worked, because labor was cheaper in the Third World. They had intended the robbery as a protest, a stunt, if you like; said they were originally planning to give the gear back. However... To cut a long story short, when it became apparent that nobody had a bloody clue who had done it, they decided to keep their mouths shut and ended up doing it again someplace else. The spree lasted a few months; they hit I think seven, maybe eight places. But the thing is, they mostly hit places when they were empty; and if someone was going to be home, they made sure they were in and out without a soul knowing. Do you see what I'm saying?'
She nodded and smiled, feeling a welcome moment of comfort as some aspect of solidity of reassurance returned.
'they never hurt anyone,' she said.
They were dubbed "Robin's Hoods."

The prime minister to Scotland does not feel any loyalty to Scotland. Though his father is Scottish, his mother is English. For the PR value of it, he goes to a football (soccer) game, but he's embarrassed in it, and the press has a field day with it.
When the announcers say that he is in the crowd, the crowd starts booing, and a concerted chanting begins:
" 'durty English bastard. Durty English bastard.'
'Ally Dalgleish, you're a wanker, you're a wanker - Ally Dalgleish, you're a donkey's arse.'
But the nightmare didn't end there. It turned out some malignant and no doubt pinko director at the BBC had chosen to zoom in on his face during the pre-match playing of the national anthem, and of course after the first roll on the drums he had launched full-throated into 'God save our gra... ' before stopping as he realized that everyone else was singing 'oh flower of Scotland'. To compound the gaffe; he didn't know any of the words to the stupid bloody dirge, and the cameras had returned a couple of times to show him closed-mouth and blushing as those all around him strove to burst a lung. "
This crooked politician is involved in the murder of Voss up to his eyeballs.

It all goes back to the start of sending off all the jobs from the First World to the Third World. Margaret Thatcher was a huge proponent of this, but our own crooked politicians had their hands in it up to their shoulders.
"We have to wreck the unions. We have to slash jobs. We have to worry less about health and safety, because it eats into profit. We have to decimate wages, because we're in a global labor market now, and that means we're competing with the Third World.
......
Of course it was all fucking stitch-up. What had later been discovered by this investigative hack was that the government instigated the whole thing. They had very quietly decided to pull the plug on the subsidies, and tipped the wink to the americans, assuring them that there would be no public blame, and then there was no potential for damage to 'the special relationship.' [of English capitalists to American capitalists?]
Why?
Christ, why not?
The government had nothing to lose. The money that would have gone into subsidizing Meiklewood [car factory where Tam McInnes and his chum Robert worked] could be spent on something useful instead, like nuclear submarines, or tax cuts. And the loss of a few thousand jobs wasn't a drawback, it was a bonus. Mass unemployment wasn't a government failure, it was a government strategy - as everyone well knew. It was the weapon they used to break unions, force down wages, dictate conditions. But it was more sophisticated than that. It wasn't merely a question of finding any three or four million people to haunt the thoughts and weaken the resolve of every disgruntled employee. It was a specific three or four million people, Tam knew.
It was three or four million people like him.
They hadn't been out just to break their strength - they had been out to break their spirit. To do is to be; the Tories took away what they did. They took away what they were, took away what their fathers had been, took away their past and their legacy, and left them not just without means, but without purpose. And a man without purpose offers Little Resistance as a foe. He has nothing to fight for, and no comrades in arms.
Steel. Call. Ships. Cars.
They closed whole industries.
Scotland had to change, the Tories insisted. It's days of heavy industry were gone, and it's future, as envisaged by Thatcher, was as a 'service economy'. Tam would have found the idea hilarious if the reality hadn't been so fucking painful."
And all of that leads us to where we are now. Fucked. Gawd I love this author.

It takes a few dozen pages to get used to the Scottish dialect that the author writes conversations between his characters in. Here's a sample, when the three remaining Robbin Hoods are confronted by two of the men working for Dalgleish on the framing of them. He calls Spammy SKinnymalinky, because Spammy is gaunt and gangly.
" 'Save it, Faither,' Paterson spat. 'this isnae the fuckin' movies. I don't need to prove to masel' that I can waste any I'm yous cunts.' He shook his head derisively. 'you think this gangly yin wasnae just lucky back there? Yous think yous were fuckin' geniuses 'cause the polis never found you? Listen, Faitherr, an' you listen as well, Daddy Long Legs. The only reason yous cunts made it this far is because they were followin' orders to look in the wrang places, an' because they knew we had yous in oor sights the whole fuckin' time. Wan phone call, wan order, and yous three were dropped. And the phone call's came, by the way.' "

Well, I had a few moments where I was on the edge of the seat, thinking Jack Parlabane and his fiance Sarah were going to bite the dust, but Jack Parlabane knows what he's doing.

Great political and capitalists put-down. If only we had a few people like Jack Parlabane around now.

What an entertaining read! Reminds me of when my father went into the hospital for the last time and the ICU dr said why bother, he's going to die anyway. Or words scarcely cloaked to that effect.

This was another group of 'people with secrets' cut off on a remote island (I am never going to stay on a remote island) with a murderer. I found there were slightly too many women for me to focus on (I kept forgetting who Nicolette was), and the frequent shifts in perspective were frustrating and distracting. Some of their secrets seemed a bit inconsequential, and others so extreme that the way they were all forgiven and forgotten at the end was implausible. I saw most (but not all) of the twists coming, although I am not sure if that was due to my superior skills of perception or the author's skill at seeding clues. I feel sorry for Jen's fiance...½

It kept my interest, and I enjoyed the narration. I'll read more from this author

I was hooked right from the start when it came to Fallen Angel. The blurb and the cover had intrigued me and I was really thrilled to feel right from the beginning that this book engrossed me. Fallen Angel is the story about the death of a little girl, Niamh, sixteen years ago. No body was ever found, but everyone assumed she drowned in the sea. Now the family is back in Portugal where it all happened. Across the Temple villa is Amanda working as a nanny for a family. She finds herself drawn to the Temple family and the more she starts to spend time with the Temple family the more she feels that they are hiding something.

Fallen Angel is my kind of thriller with family secrets and untrustworthy people. Honestly, not many in the book are especially sympathetic with the exception of Amanda. It's the kind of book that you just want to read one more chapter and even though some of the twists were perhaps not that unexpected were they interesting and made the story fascinating to read. I liked how the story also showed us flashbacks to the past, events that led to little Niamh death. I found the book to be a great thriller and I can't wait to read more from Chis Brookmyre!

I want to thank the publisher for providing me with a free copy through NetGalley for an honest review!

I was hooked right from the start when it came to Fallen Angel. The blurb and the cover had intrigued me and I was really thrilled to feel right from the beginning that this book engrossed me. Fallen Angel is the story about the death of a little girl, Niamh, sixteen years ago. No body was ever found, but everyone assumed she drowned in the sea. Now the family is back in Portugal where it all happened. Across the Temple villa is Amanda working as a nanny for a family. She finds herself drawn to the Temple family and the more she starts to spend time with the Temple family the more she feels that they are hiding something.

Fallen Angel is my kind of thriller with family secrets and untrustworthy people. Honestly, not many in the book are especially sympathetic with the exception of Amanda. It's the kind of book that you just want to read one more chapter and even though some of the twists were perhaps not that unexpected were they interesting and made the story fascinating to read. I liked how the story also showed us flashbacks to the past, events that led to little Niamh death. I found the book to be a great thriller and I can't wait to read more from Chis Brookmyre!

I want to thank the publisher for providing me with a free copy through NetGalley for an honest review!

Ik was al te ver in het boek om het nog weg te leggen, maar uiteindelijk jammer dat ik er al die uren aan besteed heb.

Film student Jerry needs out of the college digs and so responds to an advertisement to a place that maybe cheap enough but has a catch. You have to live with three old women but as Jerry was raised by his grandmother that really shouldn’t be a problem for him. Two of the old dears are just that but the third is who’s been driving all the other applicants away. Millicent has just been released from prison after 25 years for killing her lover, though she continues to proclaim her innocence, and is still a little rough around the edges. When the four go out for a getting to know you dinner at the restaurant of a local hotel Millie spots a picture of her dead lover in a photograph supposedly taken a couple of days after his death. Her subsequent investigations, with the aid of Jerry, sets off a chain of events that may end in the death of all four of them.

The story is told over two timelines with current day of Millicent & Jerry following a trail of breadcrumbs that lead them across Europe and back to just prior to the murder that Millie (as she was known then) got banged up for. The characters were well drawn but the plot was just a little too formulaic to make this a stand-out read. Especially as there wasn’t enough of the traditional Brookmyre dark humour the author is known for. Hopefully his next is back on track.

I have to admit some of the Scottish colloquiums escaped me, though I got the gist. This humorous thriller set in the shady world of the NHS is so perfectly plausible and entertaining, it’s almost a must-read. I loved the character of Parablaine and would definitely read more work by Brookmyre if not for my to-be-read mountain. Highly recommend.