Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre

review by Maryom

When the dead body of Dr Jeremy Ponsonby is found in the flat below his, investigative journalist Jack Parlabane can't help but stick his nose in. The circumstances at first lead the police to believe it's a random burglary-related killing but his instinct for a cover-up leads Parlabane in a totally different direction  - to the Midlothian NHS Trust and an executive who's been getting away with murder - both literal and financial.
I've read other  Christopher Brookmyre thrillers but never this, Quite Ugly One Morning, his debut novel, first published in 1996, and reprinted now as one of  Abacus' 40th Anniversary editions - scandals within NHS trusts are still sadly as topical now as then!
I'd say it was a mix of crime thriller and political commentary - though that sounds like something worthy but dull and Quite Ugly One Morning is far from that! It's fast-paced, full of sharp one-liners and witty dialogue - oh and is very, very bloody - all Brookmyre's trademarks really. There's the journalist main character - used to coming up against the sharp retaliatory end of the people he exposes in the press; two strong female supporting characters; and the most pathetic excuse for a hitman I've ever encountered - he may be a hardened paid killer but with all his outrageous accidents I had to feel sorry for him by the end.



Abacus 40th Anniversary editions

Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Abacus
Genre - Adult Crime

Buy Quite Ugly One Morning from Amazon

A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil by Christopher Brookmyre

With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies?
review by Maryom

When two inexpertly disposed-of dead bodies are discovered  DS Karen Gillespie feels like she's returned to her schooldays. Not only was one of the bodies a class mate but the two chief suspects were as well... and the celebrity lawyer that one of them persuades to help for old times' sake ....and the pub landlady that the lawyer tries to pump for information and other things. The clues to the murderer's identity are not going to be found by the normal processes of forensics and interrogation of suspects but by delving into the shared past of these characters. While DS Gillespie uncovers a trail of corruption in the local planning department, it seems that more hinges on what these people got up to back in primary school.

Despite the whodunnit crime novel set up most of the story is told in flashbacks to the characters' schooldays - sometimes funny, sometimes painful look back at childhood and the influences it has on later 'grown-up' life.
If you like your humour dark and twisted, you'll love this - the opening scenes of totally inept body disposal were some of the funniest things I've read in ages.

Warning - a lot of the language throughout is robust, colourful or crude, depending on your viewpoint - maybe to be expected in the fumbling idiots trying to dispose of the bodies in the opening scene but not so much from a group of  5 year olds just starting at primary school.

This book has been sitting on the TBR pile for a long long while. Having read and immensely enjoyed Brookmyre's All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye, I bought this one for my hubby, who decided it wasn't his kind of thing (!) and I've been meaning to read it myself ever since. So glad I did!

Maryom's review - 4 stars
Publisher - Little, Brown
Genre - Crime, humour

Buy A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil from Amazon

Favourite Scottish Reads - as seen on Twitter

A brief post provoked by a question from @EdinCityofLit on Twitter earlier this week about favourite Scottish reads. Now, on Twitter you've got about 10 seconds to think of something clever or amusing, or even preferably both, to say. So briefly hunting round my brain I picked

The Crow Road by Iain Banks
All Fun and Games until Somebody Loses an Eye by Christopher Brookmyre
Bloodstone by Gillian Philip

and then watched as everyone else came up with more sensible ideas - Kate Atkinson's Case Histories series, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, anything by Alexander McCall Smith....

Anyway, I thought I'd defend myself .....

The Crow Road - yes, it opens with an attention grabbing sentence about the narrator's grandmother exploding but what makes this book stand out for me is the almost fictional landscape that Iain Banks creates. Some authors set their books in places recognisable to their readers; some create a totally imaginary setting: in The Crow Road the two meet. Many of the places are real and the fictional ones wrap round, under and over them (mirroring the relationship between life and fiction). Go to Crinan (a place I knew before reading the book) and you can visualise where Gallanach must be - you can imagine a viaduct crossing Loch Fyne at Minard - and heading back towards Glasgow, you'll drive carefully in case that fatal litter bin is still there! Stand at Crinanferry and you can visualise an alternative world where Upper Loch Crinan is a deep water port rather than mud-flats barely covered at high tide, where a bustling town with docks and glass works grew up on its banks, maybe peopled by folk just like Prentice McHoan and his exploding grandma!
People often ask about novels that have impacted on readers lives and in an immensely trivial way this has - every time we drive on the motorway, I encourage my husband to try Ashley's trick of crossing from one lane to the next without hitting the cat's eyes!



All Fun And Games Until Somebody Loses An Eye - an action-packed comic escapade that I happened when talking about it recently to liken to Charlie's Angels. So why put it up there in favourite reads? Because of the heroine, Jane Fleming - who's led a life of dull propriety until she suddenly finds herself plunged into a world of fast cars, designer clothing and international espionage worthy of a Bond girl. But Jane is no young bimbo - she's a 46 yr old granny! After years trapped in dull routine, she has the chance to break out of the mould her family have cast her in, to live the life she always wanted and prove that age is no barrier to having fun!





Bloodstone - cheating a bit to include this as it's not published till August. I've recently read a proof copy and found some of its passages the most harrowing I've ever read. Gillian Philip is not an author to let her characters, or her reader, off lightly and there's no pulling of punches when it comes to making them suffer. When you think the characters have all the emotional and physical turmoil they can stand - there's more to come! I'm not a person to sob my way through any sad parts and tear-jerkers don't normally work on me, but at a certain point while reading, I called a temporary halt - put the book in the freezer for a while, as Joey from Friends does - because it didn't seem right and proper to carry on without a pause, so much was I involved with the characters, their pain and grief.


So, there we go, my favourite three Scottish reads - certainly the three that sprang to mind quickest.

What would you pick?





This originally appeared on Maryom's personal blog 19/07/11