Review of Where Bodies are Buried by Chris Brookmyre

Note the slight difference in this title. Author is calling himself, Chris, not Christopher. Are we to understand he wants us to use his pet name or is it something else?

No, I think its the fact that this is more a crime novel than his previous tales and he's playing with his readers just as Iain Banks does when he writes sci-fi and includes a middle initial, M.

Anyway, it took me a while to get to reading this, a year or so after publication. Main reason being that I missed out in the initial cut price deal from Amazon and it seemed to be taking forever to come out in paperback which is unusual for Brookmyre when so many of his books were originally published in trade paperback form and didn't make it into hardback.
The paperback was due out in June but I managed to pick up a reasonably priced second hand copy on the Amazon marketplace. Ironically enough this was sent from the US!

Enough background! To the story.
This is a simple bad cops/gangsters and villains/private detective mystery.
Not so simple when you try to remember which gangster is in which gang but at the end of the day this is not hugely important.
Initially, there are 2 strands. One involves DSI Catherine Mcleod, DS Laura thingy who are investigating the killing of a notorious gangland drug dealer. The other has Jasmine and Jim Sharp involving in private investigations in a number of areas. Just after the start though Jim Sharp disappears and Jasmine, despite her PI naivity, tried to find out what has happened to him by looking into is ongoing work. In the course of this she encounters Tron Ingrams who turns out to be a reborn gangland fixer called Glen Fallan. Somewhat mysteriously, he helps her out in lots of ways.
The plot is fairly fast moving and twists and turn a fair amount but not so much that we get completely lost although I did think the author got lost once of twice in the east end of Glasgow.

Why do authors include real places in their books but then make up fictitious neighhourhoods? Here its an area called Gallowshaugh. Is it for fear of being sued by unhappy residents in such an area. Find that a hard one to believe. Or is it then what's there isn't good enough for their story?

Quibble aside, I thoroughly enjoyed this departure from the usual satirical crime that Brookmyre writes and won't be waiting so long to read his latest which is due out next month.

8 out of 10.