Gruesome but very funny shenanigans in this novel with Brookmyre’s Jack Parlabane in pursuit of one Stephen Lime, an obnoxious Thatcherite businessman who is fleecing the NHS and seeking to get rich quick by closing a geriatric hospital and flogging its prime site in the centre of Edinburgh to a property development firm. There is excellent satire in this book about the whole culture of Thatcherite free-market Britain and the madness of allowing allegedly competent business people with no medical background to run the NHS. Also, Brookmyre nails very accurately the way in which incompetence and poor performance by senior executives gets rewarded, not punished, in the free market with a never ending revolving of seats on boards of directors for individuals whose only achievement is to be connected in the right circles. But beyond the satire it is the warmth and the humour that makes Brookmyre’s writing so irresistible. Ragged hero Jack Parlabane (“He ordered an espresso, turned down her offer of a roll-up and sat back in his chair, pushing his hair back, yawning and opening his eyes wide as if the waking was not his natural state”), police office Jenny Dalziel, and Sarah Slaughter, downtrodden but feisty ex-wife of the murdered doctor, are the main characters in this sometimes hysterically funny story. With Brookmyre, you can be reading along and then he comes out with a dry line so good that you laugh out loud. He is also very good at observing the social rituals that people engage in, as in one scene where he is having a drink at his local. “By about seven-thirty the place was filling up with the evening regulars, the post-work swift halves and cathartic office bitching-therapy groups having come and gone over a bustling ninety minutes”. Being Glaswegian, Brookmyre cannot resist taking a shot or two at Edinburgh and its citizens. The affectations of the anglicised Edinburgh establishment receive his withering attention. “From what he could remember, Edinburgh was full of natives who spoke with that anonymous, Home Counties BBC accentless English accent, and who got very shirty and upset when you asked where they were from down south. To them, theirs was a Scottish accent, just a more refined one than the rather rough and coarse vernacular favoured by the lumpen proletariat. In Parlabane’s more militantly Glaswegian moments, this pissed him off no end.” But under Parlabane’s cynicism there beats the heart of a romantic in denial. He is flustered when Sarah’s eyes meet his and she doesn’t look away. “It was a look of interest, concern and affection, but was greater than the sum of these.”
Two-thirds of the way through the first chapter of QUOM, the detectives at the newly discovered, extremely messy crime scene, discover that not only has the murderer been as brutal and sadistic as he appears to have possibly been able to manage, but he has also done a sizable shit on the mantelpiece. And lo, the tone is set. A very few chapters later, Christopher Brookmyre tells you whodunnit, and the rest of the book involves a lot of charging about while the good guys explain to each other how their deducings are getting on, and the bad guys get increasingly worried about their progress.I'm sure that would be a turn-off for a lot of readers, but I have an extremely lassez-faire attitude to spoilers. I like watching people work things out - I even quite like Info-Dump By Dialogue, okay? sue me - and I like a good detective story where I know the outcome already. It's fun watching other people get there. The style of story suited me very much.Ornamental coprolite not so much. You win some, you lose some.This book is not subtle. I've read other Brookmyre and having done so I can tell this is his first novel - he's gearing up. He gets better. But just because something isn't subtle doesn't mean it's not good, or clever. If I'm sporting a massive purple bruise above my eye, it's from being beaten about the skull with his political message - but that's okay, I had fun with it. I cheered half the cast; I booed the other half. I liked who I was meant to like and didn't like the ones I wasn't. QUOM is set in my city, too, and it was nice to rampage around a bit.A bit more delicacy next time, Christopher, and a few more dimensions to your core team, and we might be talking about bumping up a star. Also you have to promise me to go around with the disinfectant before you invite me in.
What do You think about Quite Ugly One Morning (1997)?
Quite Ugly One Morning = ((NHS + money-grabbing politician) x (Parlabane + romance)) ^ Graphic violenceFor a long time previously my other half had been reading Brookmyre and loving them. Loving them so much that he would stay up late into the night reading them because he just had to finish. My reaction to this would be to moan; "Turn out the light, I want to go to sleep!"After much cajoling, I finally agreed to read a Brookmyre book. Being the anal kind of person that I am, I insisted on starting at the beginning.Before I'd even finished the book I was apologising to my other half for ever moaning or rolling my eyes when he couldn't put a Brookmyre book down, or insisted on reading snippets out to me.I was hooked by page three. It is a fantastic opening chapter, and still my second favourite Brookmyre chapter ever. Graphic violence galore, but damn if he doesn't make it funny. If you don't laugh out loud during that first chapter, then I truly believe you have no sense on humour.The rest of the book made me laugh, and cringe, and pull faces and go "eww", and smile and go "aww", and laugh again. And more.I will admit, I didn't like Parlabane at first. But like the mould in the on-call showers, he grew on me. Brookmyres characters are, if looked at rationally, kind of over-the-top and unrealistically caricatural, but that doesn't stop them being brilliantly done, and, in more subtle ways, they do have a lot of depth. I really really hated the evil characters, I really really loved the good characters and I really really laughed at the comic relief characters (McGregor, Skinner, I'm looking at you).Basically, I would recommend this book to everyone.
—Wendle
I received a note from a Goodreads friend after a review I wrote about the last Stuart MacBride book suggesting a check out Christopher Brookmyre. I finally did and am totally hooked on his main character, Jack Parlabane, a very witty investigative reporter uncovering murder and fraud in the world of Edinborough's National health Service. Besides being an excellent, well crafted mystery, it's brilliantly funny - like Carl Hiaassen or Dan Jenkins funny. So...I've already purchased Jack Parlabane #2 on my Color Nook.
—Ed
If Quentin Tarantino and Carl Hiassen had a love child, and he was Scottish, he might turn out to be something like Christopher Brookmyre - violent, profane and outrageously funny.Jack Parlabane is an intrepid muckraking journalist who stumbles - quite literally - into a horrific murder scene. The doctor in the apartment below him has been killed. Parlabane determines to get to the bottom of it with the help of the doctor's ex-wife and DC Jenny Dalziel. They uncover massive financial chicanery and mass murder in the National Health System. It's savage social satire and laugh out loud funny in so many places I lost count.About Parlabane, Brookmyre says:"To fully acknowledge the extent of the debt I owe Douglas Adams - as a reader and a writer - would very possibly crash this server, so I will merely cite one significant example. I am frequently asked who was the inspiration for my investigative journalist Jack Parlabane; whether he has some real-life antecedent or represents some indulgent alter-ego of mine. The truth is that Parlabane was entirely inspired by Ford Prefect: I always adored the idea of a character who cheerfully wanders into enormously dangerous situations and effortlessly makes them much worse."
—Monica
