Sorted on book title (not in series order)
Jane Fleming, forty-six and three years a grandmother, has always played by the rules, never hurt anybody, never lied, never even had a parking ticket. But she’s about to put all that right in a very big way…
Intrigue. Espionage. Advanced technology. Clinical violence. Hoovering...Read more
This audio book was part of my revisit of the entire Parlabane series so I was cheating a bit, having already done "all the emotions" over the opening line of the blurb.
I do get the idea of telegraphing the end of Jack and the whole Parlabane series was going to grab some...Read more
Do you believe in ghosts? Do we really live on in some conscious form after we die, and is that form capable of communicating with the world of the living?...Aye, right.
That was Jack Parlabane's stance on the matter, anyway. But this was before he found himself in the more...Read more
It was a junket, a freebie. A 'team-building' weekend in the highlands for lawyers, advertising execs, businessmen, even the head of a charity. Oh, and a journalist, specially solicited for his renowned and voluble scepticism - Jack Parlabane. Amid the flying paintballs and flowing Shiraz...Read more
Number 4 in the Jack Parlabane series and silly me thought this would be an excellent audio book to have burbling away in the background whilst I got on with some work around the house. Kept having to stop and listen hard, or lean against a wall because I was laughing so much.
...Read more
Heaven is a prison. Hell is a playground.
Would it be your ultimate fantasy to enter the world of a video game?
A realm where you don’t have to go to work or worry about your health; where you can look like a hero or a goddess; where you can fly space-ships, slay...Read more
Back when they were students, just like everybody else, Ray Ash and Simon Darcourt had dreams about what they'd do when they grew up. In both their cases, it was to be rock stars. Fifteen years later, their mid-thirties are bearing down fast, and just like everybody else, they're having to...Read more
Diana Jager is clever, strong and successful, a skilled surgeon and fierce campaigner via her blog about sexism. Yet it takes only hours for her life to crumble when her personal details are released on the internet as revenge for her writing.
Then she meets Peter. He's kind,...Read more
BLACK WIDOW is the 7th Jack Parlabane story, which I did read before WANT YOU GONE, but the review is going up out of order, just because (well actually I was working my way through a list from the bottom up so that's worked well....)
Anyway, this book is the story of surgeon...Read more
Jack Parlabane, the investigative journalist who is not averse to breaking the law for the sake of a good story, has finally been caught on the petard of his own self-confidence and is experiencing accommodation courtesy of Her Majesty. The fledgling Scottish parliament is in catatonic...Read more
The 3rd in the Jack Parlabane series, the audio of this book kept mildly freaking me out. Originally published in 2000, the political satire, the social commentary, and the sheer breathtaking bloody awfulness of the "powers that be" could be right now. So right now, that it was freaky,...Read more
The murder of a media mogul in his country mansion appears to be the result of his disturbing a gang of would-be thieves. The robbers are swiftly caught, but when they are unexpectedly moved to a different prison they escape.Read more
Bit spoiled for audio choice at the moment, having decided to really concentrate on back to favourite series. This is the second Jack Parlabane book from Scottish writer, and world class pointer out of the idiocy of some aspects of life, Christopher Brookmyre (I was particularly pleased to...Read more
“But Parlabane, tears welling in his eyes as knelt trembling on the carpet, knew exactly what they meant.
They meant black was white, white was black, something was very, very wrong- and only he could prove it.”
When I started my summer favourites series...Read more
I think I'll just keep saying this until I run out of breath completely - but really, the world needs more quality collections of Crime Short Stories. CRIMESPOTTING, a fabulous little volume put together as a fund raiser for The ONECITY Trust, is subtitled "An Edinburgh Crime Collection...Read more
All the short stories in Crimespotting are brand new and specially commissioned. The brief was deceptively simple - each story must be set in Edinburgh and feature a crime. The results range from hard-boiled police procedural to historical whodunit and from the wildly comic to the...Read more
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...Read more
Life is dangerous when you have everything to lose. Famous, beautiful and talented, Heike Gunn has the world at her feet. Then, one day, she simply vanishes.
Meanwhile, journalist Jack Parlabane has lost everything: his career, his marriage, his self-respect. A call for help from...Read more
The 6th Jack Parlabane novel, listened to as part of my audio wander back through the series, this outing is post Jack stuffing everything up. He's lost his career, his marriage and, for once in his life, his mojo. Pulled into the investigation of a missing pop-star by the sister of his...Read more
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...Read more
Private investigator Jasmine Sharp's father was murdered before she was born, and her mother went to self-sacrificing lengths in order to shield her from the world in which he moved. Since her mother's death, all she has been able to learn is his first name - and that only through a strange...Read more
Flesh Wounds (aka Bred in the Bone) is the third in the Jasmine Sharp series from Scottish author Christopher Brookmyre. One of those authors that is on the "to be purchased immediately" list, under the category "I'm starting to fret about the time it's taking to get to this one". Welded on...Read more
Everyone's favourite unorthodox journalist, Jack Parlabane, goes undercover to investigate the mysterious and lucrative world of alternative medicine: in particular the practice of homeopathy. Are there unexplained forces that can be harnessed to heal us, or is it all a load of sugar?...Read more
Snowy London, a few days before Christmas, and a civil servant realises she has a chance for revenge.
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 whistleblower, calling a journalist who...Read more
The Guardian (London) has called comic-thriller writer Christopher Brookmyre "the next star of the genre . . . who writes in] the sassy, nasty, fast style of the Americans Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen." His American debut, Not the End of the World, is a fast and furious novel set in Los...Read more
As an unrepentant, welded-on, dedicated Christopher Brookmyre fan I do have to ration these books a bit. So NOT THE END OF THE WORLD has been lurking here for quite a long time, although I was a little startled to learn it was originally published in 1998. Not because it's been lurking for...Read more
The occasion: high school reunion.
The place: an oil rig converted into a tourist resort.
The outcome: carnage.
Gavin is creating a unique ‘holiday experience’; every facility any tourist who hates abroad will ever want will all be available on a converted...Read more
Gavin is a holiday tour operator turned big spending resort developer who was invisible at school. Simone, his wife, has had enough of Gavin and his philandering and wants a divorce, although Gavin doesn't know that yet. Catherine is the PR agent for the oil-rig resort and for reasons that...Read more
The senior pupils of St Peter's High School are on retreat at a secluded outdoor activity centre, coming to terms with the murder of a fellow pupil through the means you would expect: counselling, contemplation, candid discussion and even prayer - not to mention booze, drugs, clandestine...Read more
Fans of Christopher Brookmyre's dark, black-comedic writing are probably going to do what I did when this book arrived. A bit of dignified happy dancing and a general clearing of the activity calendar to sit down for a jolly good read and, along the way, a lot of very undignified laughing...Read more