Comic thriller with a contemporary take on Robin Hood (Country of the Blind - Christopher Brookmyre)

Member Name: elkiedee

Product:	Country of the Blind - Christopher Brookmyre
Date:	14/08/04 (122 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Appealing characters, Mocks politicians, Brookmyre's politics work for me

Disadvantages: Some long digressions from the story

Nicole Carrow is a young solicitor in Glasgow who finds herself at the centre of a media storm after she defends four men accused of murdering a newspaper tycoon. Then she gets home to find a strange man in her flat who tells her that her life is in danger.

Jack Parlabane is an investigative journalist who has been looking into Nicole's controversial case. He will protect her if she goes with him. Showing a surprising degree of trust, she consents. Luckily for her, Jack is a good guy. Unfortunately though, he's right about the danger, and the events which follow suggest his optimism could be misplaced.

Meanwhile, a bus taking a group of men held on terrorism charges explodes, and they escape. They are sure that the trial they face won't be fair and they expect long sentences. These 4 men are small time criminals. Brookmyre skilfully shows their life on the run and the developing relationships of friendship and affection between them.

These two storylines are interwoven before coming together near the end of the book. I read on to find out if Jack and his girlfriend Sarah would help Nicole, whether the escapees can survive and stay outside. etc.

Jack and Sarah also featured in a previous book, Quite Ugly One Morning, and it was nice to meet up with them again. Their friend Jenny the rebellious policewoman from that book also reappears, albeit only briefly. I also liked the characters of the escapees.

As was the case in the other book by the author I've read, the baddies in this book are faily obvious - they are Tory politicians and those with powerful vested interests in maintaining the status quo.

So, I liked the characters. The plot didn't seem that substantial to me and relied heavily on conspiracy. The book was quite slow paced. The previou
s book was very funny and quite political with some passages of ranting, and I expected the second to be similar. It turned out to be less humorous than I expected, with similar politics, and to have a lot of passages given to political ranting. I don't really mind whether or not a book is very funny, but even I got bored with the rants and I have a high tolerance for these things when the political comment is on the side of the fence I'm on.

This book was published in 1997, and it was fairly clearly written while Britain including Scotland had a Conservative government - after more than 6 years of New Labour, this seemed slightly dated.

I like the characters enough that I plan to carry on reading although I found this one quite dry. Some of the others have fascinating settings too. And there are books which don't feature Parlabane which also appeal to me. However, though I would recommend Brookmyre's work, I would probably suggest a different book - at the moment this would be Quite Ugly One Morning but I'm looking forward to the other books, with a wide variety of settings including a school reunion.

a few details here:

Paperback 404 pages, published 1997
Publisher: Abacus; ISBN: 0349109303
Cover price £6.99; Amazon sell for £5.59

Capital letters courtesy of: http://www.chuckleweb.co.uk/fixit.php

Summary: