Quite Ugly One Morning

Book Details

Library

Author

Christopher Brookmyre

Category

Mystery / Thriller

Publisher

Little, Brown & Co

Printed By

Clays Ltd

Country

Great Britain

Personal

Year Published

1996

Date Read

29/09/2006

ISBN

0316878839

Personal Rating

10 / 10

Binding

Hardback

Pages

214

Overview

Yeah, yeah, the usual. A crime. A corpse. A killer. Heard it. Except that this stiff happens to be a Ponsonby, scion of a venerable Edinburgh medical clan, and the manner of his death speaks of unspeakable things. Why is the body displayed like a side of beef? How come his hands are digitally challenged? And if it's not the corpse, what is that awful smell?

Jack Parlabane has a perfectly good hangover to be getting on it with before he stumbles across this memorable little tableau, but having seen it he's kind of committed – not least because he's an investigative report of unusual tenacity and morally ambiguous methods. And when he discovers the good doctor may not have been quite so good after all, his instincts tell him there's a story to be found.

Ponsonby's ex-wife Sarah has her suspicious too: after all, she's only too familiar with her late husband's penchant for backing three-legged glue-factory candidates and wonders how he manages to support his habit. A bundle of cash found in his flat suggests another source of income; perhaps even someone paying for services rendered. The true nature of those services, and the manner in which they're revealed leads Parlabane and Sarah into a Post-Thatcherite nightmare of frightening plausibility – a hunt for the 'someone' holding the purse strings who hopes to make a killing, in more – many more – ways than one.

Comment

I have a new favourite author! This is one of the funniest, most cynical books I've read for a long time, and I'm glad I started with his first book, rather than any random one. The dry wit behind every piece of dialogue makes this book hard to put down, and the fact that the 'real' baddie gets a physical battering at the hands of Fate (and then cries about it) is more rewarding than you'd expect.

This is a gritty book, with plenty of swearwords and blood, so it won't appeal to everyone, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.