The Cut: A BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick

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The Cut is a story that plunges the reader into the movie business, horror movies in particular, and it entails everything from a little history about how the genre came to life to urban legends, while also making you feel as if you’re a fly on the wall on a movie set. Even though it’s not my genre to watch at all, I thought it was very interesting to read about. The tension builds up to almost unbearable levels by the time Jerry has to reveal a deadly secret he’s been keeping from Millicent. It’s a detailed, brilliant read, and it takes a while to warm up to Millicent but by the end of this whirlwind ride, you’re cheering for her and Jerry and amazed by how the plot unfolds. Until she meets Jerome (Jerry). Millicent lives with Vivien and Carla, also elderly ladies, and they have advertised a room for rent in their very nice house. Enter Jerry, a student of film and politics at Glasgow Uni. The women can’t work out why Jerry would want to live with them but Jerry is desperate to get out of the halls of residence. He feels really out of place among the posh students and anyway, he was raised by his dear departed granny. But Millicent and Jerry have something in common - Jerry loves the old horror movies and metal music. And Millie was a special effects make-up artist for a lot of those old horror movies and she lived ‘the life’ until her incarceration.

I always wanted to be able to combine those things. I think when you’ve read about something that you really relate to and you know intimately and you know that place, it’s more of a buzz if you can picture it. When I was reading Iain Banks in my early 20s, I would really be excited by the fact these very bizarre things were happening in places I knew.” Zevon and Bruce Springsteen feature in the second novel, Country of the Blind. The band 'Savage Earth Heart' in Dead Girl Walking share their name with a song by The Waterboys. I’ve done that down the years by exploring other genres, or things come along like Ambrose Parry where I’m writing with my wife and that changes everything. It has a completely different tone and dynamic to it. The book is full of the usual snark and wit, with a few digs at the Tories - all fine by me. A thinly disguised Rupert Murdoch figure is one of the baddies, with the Home Office not far behind. Talk about having the establishment against you.

Bampot Central was shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Macallan Short Story Dagger in 1997. In the early hours of 14 June 2017, a fire engulfed the 24-storey Grenfell Tower in west London, killing at least 72 people and injuring many more. An entire community was destroyed. For many people affected by this tragedy, the psychological scars may never heal. Are you going to ask everybody else to open their doors, and are they to remain under suspicion if they don’t?’ Detective Superintendent 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. Catherine is not smiling, however. From the moment she discovered a symbol daubed on the victim's head, she has understood that this case is far more dangerous than it appears on the surface, something that could threaten her family and end her career. However, much as there are some really good elements it cuts from one time frame to another which makes the cutting choppy. There is so much going on it’s convoluted and there are so many characters and threads my head spins with the effort of keeping up. There are sections especially in the making of Mancipium that are longwinded and don’t especially interest me. There are way too many film references between Jerry and Millicent which someone more au fait with movies may enjoy more than I do.

Millie Spark has been released after serving a quarter of a century in prison for the murder of her boyfriend. She still protests her innocence, at least to herself. She is in her seventies now, still physically fit but emotionally battered by her experience, struggling to undertake even minor errands. Her former life as a special effects make-up artist in low budget horror films is something she can’t even think about. As the book went on however it lost its impact somewhat as her character seems to miraculously change as she strives to find out what really happened. The Crime Writers' Association Dagger Awards 2020" (PDF). The Crime Writers' Association . Retrieved 24 October 2020. 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.That horror movie, ‘Mancipium’ , was never officially released, and on the internet grapevine it has the reputation of being cursed: almost everybody linked to the movie has died or disappeared shortly after production finished and the original reels were stolen. I saw the guy behind the counter give you money,’ Philippa mumbled uncomfortably, looking at her shoes. A chance event gives Millie a new lead on the events that led to her conviction. When she begins to dig, she puts herself and Jerry in danger. They go on the run, on a journey that takes them across Europe, determined to protect themselves and to solve the mystery of what really happened. In 2003, Quite Ugly One Morning was dramatised in two parts by ITV, with the lead played by Irish actor James Nesbitt. None of Brookmyre's other novels have been adapted for television, but his short story Bampot Central was rewritten as a radio play by the author for BBC Radio 3. Places in the Darkness (starting with this novel, the author's byline is given as Chris Brookmyre), [12] 2017

This is a bit of a slow starter, but the snarky tone keeps things going until the plot really gets in gear. Millicent and Jerry enjoy testing each other with obscure film references, and their deep movie knowledge comes in handy when they devise clever ruses to keep themselves alive and to finally uncover the truth.The boy wouldn’t have made a card player. There was a quivering twitch to his bottom lip as he realised his mistake and the This is a special novel. A brilliant, original, up-to-the-minute tale with all of the dark, edgy, humorous brilliance we’ve come to expect from one of the finest crime fiction writers in the world. The Cut is simply superb’ All Fun And Games until Someone Loses an Eye was the winner of the seventh Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction in 2006.