false 3092119 140870062X 9781408700624 68 19 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3092119.A_Snowball_in_Hell 167572 Christopher Brookmyre 2109 206 5 9 false Sun Jun 28 12:27:09 -0700 2009 Mon Jul 06 04:03:16 -0700 2009
Not that I’ve actually ever used cocaine, but if what they tell me is true, I guess Brookmyre has much the same effect.

NO SPOILERS

That’s the key to this review. If you want to find out about this book I suggest you read all three of the books that this one is the last bit of – the Angelique de Xavia trilogy (at least, so far). The other two being in order: A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away and The Sacred Art of Stealing. Part of me wishes I’d re-read the pair of them before starting this one – as there were references throughout that only just ever so dimly registered – but it was not totally necessary. Anyway, I’ve already told you about my Brookmyre problem, so delaying the pleasure of reading this one by re-reading the two previous books was never going to be an option.

I love Angelique de Xavia. She appeals to the outcast in me. I think I like her more than Jack Parlabane and at least as much as that woman from All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye who must be due another book soon. And my favourite thing about her is reprised here – that she is a black Catholic Glasgow girl who is a Rangers supporter. (The enemy of my enemy is my friend, as they say)

When I was in high school, I must have been about twelve, I had to write a book review on a book of my choice. My chosen book was Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Niggers, which is now called And Then There Were None and in the film the poem that is central to the story became Ten Little Indians – racism against Native Americans somehow seeming less obnoxious than racism against Black Americans.

I wrote in my essay that the problem I had with Mystery Stories was that the author always keeps something back, the vital piece of information, and that is the bit of information that matters the most. My English teacher – smug bitch that she was – wrote something dismissive beside this comment, something to the effect that this, after all, is the point of a mystery story. Yes, yes, touché. But I intended something much more than my fumbling pen at the time achieved. That story was, if I can remember at all correctly (and I haven’t read it since I was twelve), written in omniscient narration. You know what I mean? The word ‘omniscient’ means ‘Knows everything’. Well, if the narrator knows everything, where is there room for any mystery? It is hard not to feel cheated by the little facts conveniently left unsaid.

We read this novel from behind the eyes of about three of the characters in turn. The fact we don’t know what is going to happen next is either because the characters themselves don’t know or because they aren’t prepared to tell us, and they are more than happy to let us know that it is none of our business when they decide not to tell us.

Best of all is that Brookmyre sets up a series of things that we know have to happen in this book. You know the sorts of things – boy must get girl, those needing to be rescued need to be rescued, good needs to prevail; all that sort of thing. But given we know all of these things must happen in no way makes the impossibility of any of them seeming to be able to happen ever at all less likely during the book. This guy knows how to plot a story. This guy grabs you by the sleeve and drags you to the end of the book and doesn’t care how many door-frames and interior walls you bounce off as he quickens his pace. It is a matter of keeping up or getting hurt – so you’d better keep up. Fortunately, he is always in control.

If you ever want to write a book like this here are a few pointers I’ve picked up mostly from Mr Brookmyre. First, don’t build to a climax – splash in boots and all. You should have your audience by the throat from as early as you can, page one if you can manage it. If, in this book, you can stop reading after page 15 (I’m serious, I’ve just checked) then this book won’t appeal to you at all and you might as well stop reading. Follow the first climax with another, involving someone completely different. Make incredibly nasty things happen to your nicest characters. Give them gaols and hopes and desires and then piss all over them. Make every single character count. Every thread needs to weave into the tapestry. If you create a question in the book, make sure of two things, the question is answered in a way that your reader would not be able to guess beforehand – the answer is better than the reader would have guessed before hand. Only take your foot off the accelerator pedal to shift into a gear that allows you to add more speed.

The thing is that I knew he was going to have me twisting and turning throughout this book, I even knew where this all had to end up – but even knowing both of these things I was still guessing the whole way through and never once did I feel cheated and never once did I know where he was going to twist me.

This book is about punishing people that I normally would rejoice in seeing brought low, humiliated, and shown to be hypocrites. But Brookmyre even turns this into an interesting mirror. And not one I particularly enjoyed seeing myself looking into. Okay, okay, perhaps the slow and painful death of everyone in the Big Brother House isn’t quite the unequivocal good I had thought it might have been – and I must say that I’m more than a little annoyed at being disabused of that particular fantasy, Mr Brookmyre.

These three novels would make brilliant films – particularly my favourite, The Sacred Art of Stealing - and I’ve no idea why so little of his stuff has appeared in film. The Brits did do a TV version of Quite Ugly One Morning and did so in a way that meant they couldn’t do any of the follow up books in the series, not least by getting Parlabane into a relationship with the lesbian policewoman, rather than the heterosexual nurse in that series of books, but hey, I'm not bitter.

What can I say? I lived through it – which is more than can be said for many of the characters. This is not for the faint-hearted, nor for anyone offended by strong language or rather strong sexual content and violence. Normally, the sex and violence would be enough to put me off – but he handles this stuff so well and his plotting is so good (Hitchcock in North By North-West good) that I can forgive him anything and everything. Magic, or rather: alakazammy, stairheid rammy.
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