A Son of the Rock

Little, Brown, 1996

(The pictured cover is of a paperback edition not the hardback one I read.)

Like Brookmyre’s A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away, this is another library book sale buy (from a month or so ago.)

Jack Parlabane, an investigative journalist on the run from persons unknown who tried to have him killed in Los Angeles, accidentally encroaches on a bizarre murder scene in Edinburgh. Along with the woman DC who discovers him there and the wife of the deceased he investigates the background to the killing. That’s it really.

Quite Ugly One Morning’s style is similar to A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away though here the jocular tone is a bit more at odds with the content – but the body count is high in both, even if in this one the killings are mostly off-stage.

This was Brookmyre’s first novel and has some first novel’s faults. With his seeming determination to dot every i and cross every t it’s apparent that Brookmyre was trying a bit too hard but Quite Ugly One Morning is a light, easy, uncomplicated and gratifyingly not overlong read, with dashes of humour thrown in. I did chortle out loud once or twice. Ideal stuff for relaxing into and whiling a few hours away.