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

This is the first Christopher Brookmyre novels to read and I loved it. From the beginning of the book you are transported back to being 5 as you find yourself in the classroom meeting your childhood friends (and enemies) for the first time. Martin Jackson, now a successful lawyer in London gets a call, a blast from the past from his old school friend, James "Noodsy" Doon, who has who is one of the 2 accused of beijng responsible for the killing of the 2 corpses found in the woods outside Glasgow. He , even to his own surprise, finds himself in Glasgow piecing together what happened and finds that almost everyone who is involved in the case, from ...  Read the complete review

I'm not a big fan of crime novels, but with Jasper Fforde and Christopher Brookmyre making such consistently brilliant efforts at subverting the genre, my resistance is being eroded fairly swiftly. Christopher Brookmyre has established a formidable reputation for Scottish crime thrillers. Full of bodily fluids and lurid characters, they're generally hilarious to read, but shot through with such extreme violence that there's no chance of them ever being left in the 'humour' section. A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil is told entirely in the present tense, and follows two linked story strands - the progress through school of a group of ...  Read the complete review

~ ~ I’ve been a fan of the Scottish author Christopher Brookmyre ever since I read one of his early books “Boiling A Frog” a few years back. His irreverent style of writing and his constant use of Scots vernacular in his prose appeals to me, although how someone not schooled in the intricacies of Scottish slang ever manages to wade their way through one of his books is as much a mystery as some of the crime/comedy novelist’s yarns. (Hence my title) ~ ~ Brookmyre has been feted as one of the UK’s finest novelists ever since his first novel, “Quite Ugly One Morning” (1996) won the “Critics' First Blood Award” for “Best First Crime Novel of the Year”. He followed ...  Read the complete review