A Tale Etched In Blood And Hard Black Pencil (2006) - Plot & Excerpts
You know the feeling that you get when you pick a book randomly out of the bookshelf in a book store or a library, hoping it would be at least not a total sh*t, and it turns out to be a great book? That was how I feel about this book. It was not totally random, actually. Thanks to Nick Hornby, lately I'm a sucker for anything British. Nope. 90s-to date novels by British male writer, to be precise. This book had a quote from Guardian's review on the cover 'Looks back with a painfully accurate eye... One of the funniest writers in Britain' British and funny. Plus I like the cover. I was so buying it.It turned out that it's actually Scot instead of British. Same difference? English is already not my first language (third, if you count Sundanese). But after I survived the Scottish dialect, I really enjoyed the book. It IS funny. Cleverly written. Twists that keep you from putting it down. A long journey for the characters, and you seek longingly for the connection. Which kid grew up to be which adult. How they are so different, yet so similar. And the funny thing is, I spent my childhood thousands of miles apart, totally different culture, yet I can totally relate to them (I think I was Helen, if not the girl version of Marty).After 200 pages or so and I'd already figured out at least 75% of the Scottish, I just realized that there was a glossary on the back. A bit late but still came in handy, not only for reading this book but also for general purpose especially if you plan to go to Scotland. Such as this oneginger Generic term for carbonated minerals. Despite billions of dollars spent on brand recognition and advertising, in Glasgow, Coke, Pepsi, Seven-Up and Sprite are all referred to as 'ginger'.or this onefitba Popular team sport known in some quarters as 'soccer', invented and given to the world by the Scots. English claims to have invented it rest on their having the first Football Association, which proves only that they invented football bureaucracy. Thanks a pantload, guys. You form yet another bloody committee and a hundred years later, we had to put up with Jim Farry.Shite. Now I have to look for another Christopher Brookmyre's book.
Once again, a Brookmyre book that just amazes me in how a good book should be. After living in the US for 8 years it is great to read books by an author who writers about where I grew up, and the types of people I grew up with, but still be accessible to all. his glossary at the end of the book has been amusing my American friends since I started reading the book. They have started using the words and phrases on a daily basis to make me feel more at home.Some people have complained that the murder mystery part was not as outlandish as you normally find in a Brookmyre book, but the "normality" of the solution was one that I actually really enjoyed and rounded the book off perfectly. I enjoyed the jumps between present day Braeside and school days Braeside, as the characters all change. The use of nicknames (because we all know most of our old frinds by their nicknames still) to throw you off who is actually being talked about in present day was a fantastic tool, and Brookmyre gave you the revelations at just the right time, to promote sympathy for the characters and the realisation of what will happen to them in the future. Wonderful.My one beef with the writing style was that sometimes (and this might just be a problem I had) I couldn't figure who was "telling" a portion of the story. The book is written in third person, but slips into this sort of first person prose that doesn't make sense as to what is being said. Again it might just have been me, but there is a section where Colin is speaking but it looks like his inner monologue is berating him for being stuck up etc, and I guess this was just an aside as to how others did see him. This did not spoil the book for me, but is why the book got 4 stars and not stars from me. Still amazing. Laugh out loud funny, while still hitting the heart strings when it needed t. Class.My only
What do You think about A Tale Etched In Blood And Hard Black Pencil (2006)?
This was a new author for me, and I really enjoyed it. The principal characters in the tale are from a town outside Glasgow, Braeside. As the story begins, two men are working at getting rid of two bodies. Unfortunately, they are not very successful. When the bodies are soon discovered, the men are immediately linked to them. This is where the complications start.Karen Gillespie, the local Detective Superintendent, has only recently returned to Braeside. It turns out one of the dead men was a classmate of her, Colin Temple. The two men suspected of being involved are two more classmates, known as Noodsy and Turbo.From here on the book moves back and forth between the investigation and the classmates school experiences. This is a very interesting way of having us learn about the people involved and gradually come to realize all the different relationships and loyalties. This is also how we come to know the real names of Noodsy and Turbo as we learn the circumstances of the granting of these nicknames. There is much humour here, right from the first page, and the author provides a glossary at the end for some of the Scottish slang terms used by the characters. I loved it.
—Shonna Froebel
I think the degree of enjoyment you get from reading this book is based on how you can relate to the back stories of the characters. Perhaps it's because my school experience was nowhere close to that that I didn't really get a lot of the book. I did, however, enjoy the concept of the book. I'm a sucker for crime thrillers of any sort, and this was a refreshing change from all the typical crime thrillers out there. Even then, most of the story focused on building up the characters and going into detail from primary to secondary school which pulled away from the actual crime solving process.Overall, it was an okay read and I must say it was a good ending.
—Laura
Working my way through Christopher Brookmyre's back catalogue, and have enjoyed them all up until this one. A story in two time frames - an up to date murder investigation where all the protagonists (the police, the investigators, the witnesses and the victim) all went to school together. There's a back-and-forth describing school days which we all can recognise, and is well written, but is harshly interrupted by the present day murder. Of course, the two timelines come together in the end, but until that point, it was like you were reading two different books about two different sets of characters. Not one of my favourites.....
—Mark Cowen
