Little & Brown

Part of what makes RUSH OF BLOOD work is the normality of the setup. Three couples, on an overseas holiday form one of those short-term friendships that we've probably all done. The one thing that seems to draw them together post holiday is the unthinkable. The disappearance of a young, obviously intellectually handicapped girl, from the same resort as them. The other part that works - the way the reader knows one of these six is a most likely a killer, but which one?

There are a number of devices that Billingham uses to obfuscate, explain, reveal and draw out the clues to what happened in Florida. Whilst it's a big set of possible suspects, each of the voices of each of the characters is quite distinct, as are their observations of each other - jointly and as couples. The major reconnection points, three dinner parties, hosted in turn by each couple, serve as check points in their friendship, in the events during their holidays, and in the understanding of each of them that the reader is building. The clues about what happened to the young victim are sparingly revealed - cleverly - as her body takes a long time to be discovered, in the same way that some sort of motivation, and the revelations about the killer are sparingly revealed. All the while the character of each of the six main suspects becomes clearer, and more worrying - is it the sleazy one, the creepy one or the one with the temper, maybe the appeaser, the victim or the enigma. Doubt is cast in all directions, and the pressure is increasingly getting to someone.

Whilst he's doing all of that with the possible suspects, Billingham, in short sharp bursts, also gives the reader an insight into the fallout from such a disappearance / death. The young girls mother, the local cop investigating the murder - each of these characters beautifully reflect that for every victim, there are ripples of consequence, of loss, of effect.

In RUSH OF BLOOD Billingham has created an interesting combination of character study and psychological thriller combined with a good old fashioned whodunnit. Not until the final moments of the book is the total truth revealed, and along the way it seems strange that of six random people, seemingly normal, everyday people, simply on a holiday in a foreign location... each of those people could conceivably be guilty of murder. Of a vicious, opportunistic, cruel murder into the bargain.

As a huge fan of the Thorne series of books, I've developed quite an admiration for the occasional standalone that Billingham has embarked on. RUSH OF BLOOD just reinforces that admiration - in very big spades.

You hear these rumours, and they can panic a person.  "Christopher Brookmyre has gone straight with his latest book."  I was twitchy.  How could he (either to his readers or to himself)?  Surely the man cannot possibly have lost his acute sense of the bizarre, his sly, dry and clever sense of humour.  Could he?  Of course not.  Daft idea.  WHERE THE BODIES ARE BURIED might be a police procedural, crime fiction based book, but it's classic Chris(topher) Brookmyre from the start to the end.  How could it not be!  Glasgow Policing 101 - as explained to one of the main characters Detective Catherine McLeod, when a rookie cop:

'This is Glesca.'... 'Any time you're confused, take a wee minute to remind yourself of that inescapable fact:  this is Glesca.  We don't do subtle, we don't do nuanced, we don't do conspiracy.  We do pish-heid bampot bludgeoning his girlfriend to death in a fit of paranoid rage induced by forty-eight hours straight on the batter.  We do coked-up neds jumping on a guy's heid outside a nightclub because he looked at them funny.  We do drug-dealing gangster rockets shooting other drug-dealing gangster rockets as comeback for something almost identical a fortnight ago.  We do bam-on-bam.  We do tit-for-tat, score-settling, feuds, jealousy, petty revenge.  We do straightforward.  We do obvious.  We do cannaemisswhodunit.  When you hear hoofbeats on Sauchiehall Street, it's gaunny be a horse, no' a zebra...'.

Phew.  Brookmyre without a rant ... well ... I'd have to double check that the earth's rotation was still in alignment.

But is this good crime fiction?  Yes.  In a nutshell.  It's very good crime fiction.  It's a nice, complicated, and very believable plot.  It's full of the sorts of cunning and stupidity that you expect from the cops and crooks.  There's dedication, there's a bit of the past coming forward to screw with the present, the interlacing of worlds over many generations.  There's also more than enough twists and turns, and even a couple of lovely poignant moments.  There's some hugely funny moments, there's some poignant ones as well.  One of Brookmyre's talents has always been to create very believable, human characters.  McLeod is a marvellous combination of a dedicated, clever senior cop with a home life and all the doubts and insecurities that lots of people with rotten jobs have about hanging onto everything they hold dear.  Another main character - Jasmine Sharp, niece of a missing ex-cop, private detective - recently bereaved when her mother and sole parent died, Jasmine's a bit of a mess, to put it mildly.  She's not the world's greatest trainee private detective, but she gets points for being a very dedicated workmate and friend to her boss.  Two excellent female characters, different from each other, but the same in many ways, Brookmyre's also created a supporting cast who work with these two extremely well.  Okay there's one scenario that's a bit hard to swallow at the start of the book - but the end of the book explains it all - and besides that, it wasn't until I was well into the action that the lightbulb went off and this reader suddenly went... what the?

That's the other thing that works in WHERE THE BODIES ARE BURIED, as it does in any Brookmyre book. The pace is fantastic.  The action rolls on, the people do their thing, the tension rises, the reader loses sleep.  

There's nothing worse than a panic over where one of your favourite authors is going.  Dismiss it from your minds.  Chris / Christopher / Mr Brookmyre, whatever he and his publishers want to call him knows how to write books.  Very good books.  WHERE THE BODIES ARE BURIED is one of them.

RAVENS has a great idea for a plot - two drifters, on the way to somewhere else, overhear a story about a local lottery win and they quickly hatch a plan to take advantage.  Take the household captive and threaten everybody they hold dear until the money is handed over.

There is a blurring of norms going on in RAVENS - on the one hand you have the two drifters - Shaw and Romeo - one clever / one a bit thick - there's a power relationship between these two that feels the stresses and strains as the novel progresses.  The hostage family - the Boatwrights aren't a tight unit in their own right with a lot of tension between teenage daughter Tara and her mother - who is frankly a bit odd.  Part of the complication between mother and daughter plays out in their reactions to Shaw in particular - Tara flirting, clearly not sure if she is acting or not, and the rest of the family slipping quickly into a form of Stockholm Syndrome - so quickly it was surprising.  

The entire scenario needs a couple of important elements to work.  A real and present danger, a threat, the constant maintenance of that threat and something to make the reader believe that the family believes the reality of that threat.  But RAVENS doesn't go there.  At all.  In fact, the central plotline seemed to emerge occasionally from a mismash of subplots that got so confusing and distracting that any sense of overlying threat to the Boatwrights just disappeared in a cloud of fluff.  Granted Shaw seems to be making up most of the plot as the book goes along, but at no stage did I really feel like they were actually going to do anything - I just didn't believe the menace.  Perhaps it was that some of these subplots, the religious overtones, the families dysfunction, the drifters joint and individual dysfunction, the lack of conviction for the part they are playing from just about everybody in the plot (probably part of the design - less than convinced criminals / less than convinced victims), and it just seemed like there was too little happening in a scenario that attempted too much.

I really wanted to like this book.  An opportunistic, fraught pairing of no-hopers who have a go, granted not the go you'd be proud to tell you grandmother about, but a go nonetheless.  Despite there being a few places within the book where I distinctly remember thinking this is it, we're off, it never quite launched and I came away from the book with a feeling that I had obviously missed something.

If somebody could explain to me what I did with my common-sense I'd be very grateful.  I have this list of favourite authors, and a tendency to hoard their books.  Makes no sense whatsoever when I think about it, but IN THE DARK got caught in the daftness and lurked on the shelves here for much much longer than it should have.

A standalone novel, IN THE DARK is a thriller with an unexpected scenario and an interesting twist.  As the blurb outlines, there's a car crash in the night.  A driver is forced off the road, into a bus stop.  A man (in this case a policeman) is dead.  His partner, a policewoman, wants to know why.  Why him, what was he doing just before he died, who on earth was the man she thought she knew, how will she explain who he was and what happened to their very soon to be born child.

IN THE DARK is not just the story of her investigation into her partner's death, it's also very much a story about relationships, complications, unfinished business and how people deal with grief.  You can just about taste Helen's desperation to do something, investigate, find the truth, anything rather than just sit and grieve for her partner.  As she acknowledges an affair she has had, and the affect that it had on their partnership, she also starts to realise that there are things about Paul that she may not know.  Despite a very advanced pregnancy she doesn't want to let it go, let other's seek the truth, her policewoman's instinct is too strong, and her need to be involved overwhelming.  What stays with me still after I've finished reading this book is the way that Billingham has written such a finally balanced portrayal of this woman.  The other thing that has stayed is how sudden death can leave such an emotional minefield behind.  

That's not to say that this book isn't a thriller at the same time.  The investigation has a pace of it's own, which is enhanced by the knowledge that as Helen's baby is due very soon, her deadline is immovable.  Interspersed with Helen's search for the truth there are other stories, other people involved that night.  The impact of gangs and crime is an angle which is explored, but interestingly not completely demonised.  

Combine a lot of elements that worked really well as the story progressed, with some final twists and turns as the book draws to a close, and this was one of those excellent thrillers that really makes you stop and think.  Serves me right for taking so long to read IN THE DARK.  Note to self:  try not to make the same mistake with the next book - series or not.

Fans of Christopher Brookmyre's dark, black-comedic writing are probably going to do what I did when this book arrived.  A bit of dignified happy dancing and a general clearing of the activity calendar to sit down for a jolly good read and, along the way, a lot of very undignified laughing.  A lot of readers new to this writer may be stepping away from the book (and this review) in droves.  But really - don't.  To steal a famous phrase - do yourself a favour  (perhaps this needs to come with a strong language alert).

Sure Christopher Brookmyre writes gory, savage, lunatic satire with little regard for "social sensibilities" or "political correctness".  But within the lunacy of a bunch of school kids, pretty well intent on the things that teenagers have always been intent on - the booze, sex, drugs and partying bit of the recovery retreat; there is some fantastic sense and sensibility in the way that Brookmyre gives us a storyline, a morality play in many many ways and a set of characters to really get involved in.

It goes without saying that any military base, deep in the highlands of Scotland, that appears to have opened the very Gates to Hell, releasing horned creatures with long tails, is probably going to stuff it up.  Calling in Cardinal Tullian of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith aka The Inquisition, allowing him to torture and torment the demons, and then announcing the shutdown of the place would obviously lead to a spot of sabotage, and the release of the demons of Hell.  Which has to happen about the same time as a bunch of school children arrive in a slightly damaged bus at a resort very nearby.  Of course the bus is damaged, a simple bus trip full of kids isn't going to be a method of transporting people from A to B in Brookmyre's hands - it's got to get a bit pear-shaped just to make sure that the group's chaperones arrive at the resort just that little bit frazzled to start off with.

And lunacy, gore, elaborate death scenes, and a hefty does of utter and total chaos needless to say happens.  But in all this build-up, and within the night where all hell breaks lose, Brookmyre does what he does so well.  Stereotypes are tipped on their heads, expectations turned inside out, people - kids; adults; bullies; goths; priests and the preachy; bitches and the sweet; the chaste and the profligate all step up to the mark, and you find yourself caring about each and everyone of them.  You also find that what you see is not always what you get, and sometimes people are more than the sum of their external persona, and sometimes they're not.  The portrayal of teenagers in this book is particularly delightful - and particularly reminiscent, and something I wish I'd read when I was that age and wondering why I was the only one in the world that thought / looked / behaved / stuck out like I did.

Undoubtedly extremely violent, gory and confrontational, (it's fiction for goodness sake, personally I'm not convinced that I need to worry I could be torn limb from limb by the demons of Hell in the middle of the Scottish Highlands), PANDAEMONIUM is considerably more than it's external persona.  Not just a bit of a dig at a bunch of societal attitudes, Brookmyre digs a hole through to the depths of hell and buries a heap of garbage in it, and he does it delivering something that will make you snort with laughter, hold your breath with anticipation, and finish with great regret.