Showing results by author "Chris Brookmyre" in All Categories

Yeah, yeah, the usual. A crime. A corpse. A killer. Heard it. Except 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 slice of beef? How come his hands are digitally challenged? And if it's not the corpse, what is that awful smell?

From Chris Brookmyre, winner of the Theakstons and McIllvanney awards for Black Widow, comes a standalone psychological thriller full of twists, lies and betrayal. One family, two holidays, one devastating secret. To new nanny Amanda, the Temple family seem to have it all: the former actress; the famous professor; their three successful grown-up children. But like any family, beneath the smiles and hugs there lurks far darker emotions. Sixteen years earlier, little Niamh Temple died while they were on holiday in Portugal.

Millie Spark can kill anyone. A special effects make-up artist, her talent is to create realistic scenes of bloody violence. Then, one day, she wakes to find her lover dead in her bed. Twenty-five years later, her sentence for murder served, Millicent is ready to give up on her broken life - until she meets troubled film student and reluctant petty thief Jerry. Together, they begin to discover that all was not what it seemed on that fateful night...and someone doesn't want them to find out why.

Private investigator Jasmine Shar has been hired to find Tessa Garrion, a young woman who has vanished without trace. What begins as a simple search awakens a malevolence that has lain dormant for three decades. As Jasmine uncovers a hidden history of sex, drugs, ritualism, and murder, she realises she may need a little help from the dark side herself if she's going to get to the truth.

When her father’s killer, Glen Fallan, is arrested for another murder, PI Jasmine Sharp enters an underworld where violence is a way of life and vengeance spans generations. DS Catherine McLeod has one major Glaswegian gangster in the mortuary and another in the cells for killing him - which ought to be cause for celebration. But this case is far more dangerous than it appears on the surface; deeper than skin, darker than blood.…

Jen's hen party is going to be out of control. She's rented a luxury getaway on its own private island. The helicopter won't be back for seventy-two hours. They are alone. They think. As well as Jen, there's the pop diva and the estranged ex-bandmate, the tennis pro and the fashion guru, the embittered ex-sister-in-law and the mouthy future sister-in-law. It's a combustible cocktail, one that takes little time to ignite, and in the midst of the drunken chaos, one of them disappears.

Sam Morpeth is left to fend for her younger sister when their mother goes to prison. But when a stranger begins to blackmail her online, she's drawn her into a trap she may not escape alive. Reporter Jack Parlabane is indebted to a volatile source, and now that debt is being called in, it could cost him everything. Thrown together by a common enemy, Sam and Jack are about to discover they have more in common than they realise - and might be each other's only hope.

In Glasgow, aspiring actress Jasmine Sharp is reluctantly - and incompetently - earning a crust working for her Uncle Jim's private investigation business. When Jim goes missing, Jasmine has to take on the investigator mantle for real. Soon she stumbles into a web of corruption and decades-hidden secrets that could tear apart an entire police force - if she can stay alive long enough to tell the tale...

An Atlantic voyage. A family at war. A secret worth killing over. Reporter Jack Parlabane thrives on chasing stories in unlikely places, and where could be less likely than a fan convention on a cruise liner celebrating a contentious Sixties TV series? But unlike the media family exploiting...

Back when they were students, Simon and his friend, Ray, had dreams to become rock stars. Fifteen years later their mid-30s are bearing down fast, and they're having to accept a less glamorous life. Ray takes refuge from his responsibilities by living a virtual existence in online games. People say he needs to grow up, but everybody finds their own way of coping. But for Simon it's serial murder, mass slaughter and professional assassination.

There is no perfect marriage. There is no perfect murder. Diana Jager's life crumbles when her details are released on the Internet as revenge for her antisexism blog. Then she meets Peter. Within six months, they are married. Within six more, Peter is dead in a road accident - a nightmare end to their fairy-tale romance. But Peter's sister, Lucy, doesn't believe in fairy tales and tasks maverick reporter Jack Parlabane with discovering the dark truth behind the woman the media is calling 'Black Widow'.

Famous, beautiful, and talented, Heike Gunn has the world at her feet. Then one day she simply vanishes. Jack Parlabane has lost everything. A call from an old friend offers a chance for redemption--but only if he can find out what happened to Heike. From Berlin to Barcelona, from the streets of Milan to remote Scottish islands, Parlabane must find out what happened before it's too late, all while the walls are closing in...

Million-copy-selling Chris Brookmyre takes his fiction further than ever before in this wildly inventive and sharply-plotted novel set in the unforgiving emptiness of space. "This is as close to a city without crime as mankind has ever seen." Ciudad de Cielo is the 'city in the sky', a space station where hundreds of scientists and engineers work in earth's orbit, building the colony ship that will one day take humanity to the stars. When a mutilated body is found on the CdC, the eyes of the world are watching.

Civil servant Kendra has spent her whole life struggling against the Etonian powers-that-be. So when she realises her boss is up to no good, she turns whistle-blower, calling a journalist who is looking for a way to fight back himself. Jack Parlabane is a hack who will go to desperate lengths for a good story. Reduced to peddling PR puff pieces, he is delighted when Kendra's information threatens to blow up a national corruption case. But Parlabane soon realises this story might prove dangerous to both of them.

You know Johnny Hawke. Hard-bitten LAPD homicide detective. Always in trouble with his captain, always losing partners, but always battling for the truth, whatever it takes. You know Penny Coyne. The little old lady who has solved multiple murders in her otherwise sleepy village, despite bumbling local police. A razor-sharp mind in a Sunday best hat. Against all the odds, against the usual story, their worlds are about to collide. It starts with a dead writer and a mysterious wedding invitation.

Their eyes met across a crowded room. She was just a poor servant girl, and he was the son of a rich industrialist. Er, no, this is a Christopher Brookmyre novel, although the eyes meeting across a crowded room part is true. Where it differs from the fairy tales is that the room in question was crowded with hostages and armed bank robbers, and his eyes were the only part of him she could see behind the mask....

Vous connaissez Penny Coyne. Cette petite vieille dame adorable qui résout les meurtres dans son village écossais autrement paisible, avec une police locale sacrément inefficace. Une femme à l'esprit acéré qui s'habille avec élégance et est toujours prête à boire du thé. Vous connaissez Johnny Hawke. Détective de la brigade criminelle de Los Angeles, malin, impulsif, coriace. Un vrai dur à cuire toujours en conflit avec son capitaine, mais luttant sans cesse pour la vérité et la justice, à n'importe quel prix.

8 femmes isolées, un meurtre : un huis clos à la Agatha Christie par l'auteur plébiscité par 1 million de lecteurs au Royaume-Uni. Addictif. Un groupe de jeunes femmes va enterrer la vie de jeune fille de l'une d'elles sur une île isolée de tout. Elles se sont connues à différentes périodes de leurs vies. Leur séjour s'annonce luxueux et agréable jusqu'au moment où l'une d'elles trébuche sur le cadavre du cuisinier. Les communications avec l'extérieur sont coupées. Et nous découvrons des relations ambigües et plus complexes qu'il n'y paraissait.