Reviewed By: Sarah - RAM
Quite Ugly One Morning
Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
Christopher Brookmyre
Class/Genre: Mystery
...
I love discovering authors new to me. I especially love discovering authors who have a really frenetic breakneck style and kickass characters who get themselves into serious trouble. This book--Brookmyre's debut novel from 1996--is waaaaaaaay cool.
Jack Parlabane is having a really crappy day. He just got off a plane after someone tried to kill him back in his LA digs, and now he's hiding out in Glasgow. Well, not exactly, as he's managed to lose the keys to his apartment and has to climb back in. Except he gets into the wrong flat and stumbles across a particularly grisly murder, which looks like a burglarly gone wrong, except....well except for a lot of things. Like the fingers stuffed in the victim's throat. And other things don't add up. Since Jack's a journalist by profession and cat burglar wannabe, he decides to investigate matters further.
With the help of intrepid girl copper Jenny Dalziel (the name's gotta be a wink and nod to Mr. Hill's famous series) and the victim's ex-wife Sarah (a doctor with the last name of Slaughter, which leads to far too many jokes), Jack discovers all sorts of horribly wrong things concerning a geriatric ward, computer hacking, and manages to ruffle a whole lot of feathers in the process.
Damn, I loved this book. It was just so damn funny and hyper-violent, but the characters--not only the above three but all the other cops, the baddies (especially the evil henchman who has a nasty habit of losing limbs) and everybody else came alive with such razor-sharp edges. I'd be reading this in my office at school or in a coffee shop and try not to laugh aloud.
My only quibble? The book really had a lot of farting jokes at the beginning. But after that, things were just fine. And I certainly will be hunting up the rest of Brookmyre's backlist.
Sarah - RAM
Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Sarah - RAM
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