The Cut: A BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick

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Dark, heartfelt, stylish and thrilling, The Cut is the kind of wonderfully original tale I just adore. Chris Brookmyre is a storytelling mastermind' But when Fallan is arrested for the murder of a criminal her mother knew since childhood, Jasmine is finally forced to enter his domain: a place where violence is a way of life and vengeance spans generations. CID Officers Catherine McLeod, Anthony "Beano" Thompson and Laura Geddes appear in the three "Jasmine Sharp" novels and also play minor roles in Dead Girl Walking. This provides the first strong link between the "Sharp" and "Parlabane" story arcs. (However, note that whereas Beano is a DC - Detective Constable - in the "Jasmine Sharp" novels, he is described in Dead Girl Walking as a DI - Detective Inspector - in three locations, and never as a DC. Catherine McLeod is a Detective Superintendent in both environments.) Catherine McLeod is also mentioned in a closing chapter of Fallen Angel, as investigating the death of a character.

The reason people don’t value facts is because they belong to everyone. Myths and rumours feel like secret knowledge, and so people prize them more’ Quite Ugly One Morning is taken from Warren Zevon's album Mr. Bad Example - the last chapter title continues the song's chorus. It had sounded good when she said it. But now anyone could see his place wasn’t here. And one of those people was him.

I think the thing I like most about the book is the characters of Jerry and Millicent. When they first meet it’s a highly entertaining game of verbal tennis with Millicent’s hapless jobsworth social worker rushing to get the lobs. There is much good dark humour between them. It takes a while to get into the story but after the chance discovery the mystery deepens and becomes more intriguing and you have many questions about where it all starts to go wrong for Millicent. It appears to link to the making of an unreleased and violent film called ‘Mancipium’ in 1993. The story of the making of the film is very dark and unsavoury, think Weinstein and you get the picture. There are some interesting reflections on the impact of video nasties on key court cases at this time which is thought provoking. There are some good sections where there is fear, some jaw dropping discoveries and it gets twisty and twistier with some excitement such as that which Hollywood may produce. The end is clever and unexpected as we’ve been led up some blind alleys. The Cut is an ingenious stand-alone thriller by one my all-time favourite Scottish authors. I could tell you it’s about an ex-con grudgingly teaming up with a young thief, but this turns that old trope upside down with two unique and fascinating characters. Brookmyre has a winner in this one. It is more humorous than his latest books. By humorous, I don’t mean laugh-out-loud funny; it has a character-driven whimsical tone.

When push comes to shove, Millie finds the fires of her spirit were only dimmed, not extinguished, and Jerry has had to grow up fast among the street gangs of his childhood. The two amateur sleuths set out to find out why somebody is still ready to kill rather than answer questions about the 1994 case. Most of the clues point in the direction of the last movie Millicent Spark worked on as a special effects artist, in the days before CGI offered easy (and fake) solutions. What else can I say without giving away major spoilers? The author’s early training in investigative journalism is still serving him well in doing a thorough research and in making the power-play connections between crime and corporate interests. ( ‘You really need to catch up with modern politics, Millicent.’ ) . Between the lines, or in plain textual reference, you can catch digs at the current British Prime-Minister and the post-truth era in politics, the role of the press in promoting conspiracy theories. 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. Overall, I’d say that it’s not bad, but it’s not great; it’s a decent brain-off read, especially if you’re a big movie fan. The story about Millie’s past takes in a political element, recalling the ‘video nasties’ moral panic of the 80s and 90s and featuring a Murdoch-type family, whose story is interwoven with Millie’s both on a cultural and a personal level. It is also chastening to learn that for Jerry, the Leveson Inquiry is a historical event, something he has only learnt about at university, rather than a recent memory!Millicent Sparks was a special effects make up artist for movies especially containing violence. One fateful morning she woke up to find her boyfriend Markus Laird had been murdered as she lay asleep beside him. She denied killing him but served twenty four years in prison for murder. She now lives in Glasgow with loyal friend Vivian and when an advertisement for a room to rent in her house brings student Jerry Kelly, a film buff, into her orbit. They develop a rapport and after a chance discovery they set off on a dangerous journey to prove Millicent is innocent. The novel scored major geek points with me for the evocation of the horror scene of my VCR watching youth: from the exploitation movies of the seventies to the Italian productions of Cinecitta, from lavish parties in Cannes to discussions of gore make-up and realistic blood spills. Millie and Jerry easily score points off each other in conversations meant to establish who has the best trove of trivia about the movie industry. Until she lived through the horrors of a gruesome death herself. One morning Millie woke up to a blood-soaked scene to rival those she created on film. Her lover dead, she went to prison.

Arguably the first ever special effect used on film was decapitation,’ Millie told her. ‘Thomas Edison’s The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots in 1895.’Millicent Spark, make-up artist and murderer, has been set free after twenty-four years spent in the gaol for a crime she still considers herself innocent of. From an active, successful, creative professional woman of early middle age she has become a frail, agoraphobic, self-doubting old granny that seems unable to deal with the outside world after half a lifetime of prison. Millie decides not to be a burden on the two old ladies who have taken her in after her last relative died. After all, she has been practically dead to the world since 1994, since that morning when she woke up covered in the blood of her boyfriend. It’s better to accept her fate and exit the scene on her own terms.

Phew! This is a fun read to a point. I found the opening chapters hugely enjoyable and the depressed Millie a very interesting character and was looking forward to how it all played out. Young Jerry is in college and not getting along with anyone there, hence his house share with older women. He is also a huge fan of horror movies and knows many of the films that Millie has been involved in. Not many people can pull off a comedy thriller but Chris Brookmyre is one of them. Peppered with his trademark Scottish vernacular and witty repartee, this stand alone story is golden. Millie (Millicent) Spark is planning to kill herself very soon. She has been out for a year after serving a 24 year sentence for killing her boyfriend in 1994 although she never admitted to the crime. She certainly can’t remember doing it. But now at 72 years of age, and with her only remaining family member, her beloved brother Alistair, dead, she feels there is not much left to live for. Jerry waited for them to walk away before he shut the door, just to drive the point home. He watched them all depart, then closed it softly.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. Siege Mentality, 2017 (ebook only - short story. Originally published as The Last Siege of Bothwell Castle in the Bloody Scotland anthology) The Cut is set around films and horror ones particularly. It has two narrators. Jerry, young, and a rather light fingered student of film. Millicent, far older, and was a make-up artist on 80s horror films; she was accused of murdering her boyfriend and served a long sentence for the crime. As I write this I'm thinking that this does not sound like my sort of book. I'm not a "film" person and dislike horror particularly. However these rather off the wall ingredients made for a decent read in my mind. Rarely nowadays do I end up reading until two in the morning. I did with this book - I wanted so much to reach the end to find out what happened. This is a fast paced thriller canyoning around events past and present. It involves murder most foul, and the threat of more of the same. Danby looked wary, wondering what he was missing. It was Jerry’s turn to draw attention to their audience.