Adam Colclough lives and works in the West Midlands, he writes regularly for a number of websites, one day he will get round to writing a book for someone else to review.
Hen parties can be fraught affairs at the best of times, bringing together clashing personalities and strained friendships, then mixing the lot up with a barrel of booze. A hen party on a remote island where the bride is having second thoughts and the guests all have hidden agendas is something else entirely.
This is the situation Jen finds herself in at the start of the latest novel from Chris Brookmyre. Balancing off her own qualms about getting hitched for a second time against rivalries between old friends, suspicions held by former in-laws and her own secrets. Then a shocking incident turns everything upside down, forcing seven women with every reason to distrust each other to form a fragile alliance in the name of survival.
A closed community is the natural habitat of the traditional crime story, it would be hard to think of a community more closed than that of the island Brookmyre exiles his characters to here. The island with its bleak shore and intimidating atmosphere cuts them off from everything apart from who they really are, never a comfortable thing for anyone to have to confront.
There is also something decidedly traditional, in the best possible way, about how events play out. For all that the plot involves threats delivered via WhatsApp and secrets revealed online, the points it pivots around are age old ones about friendship, betrayal, greed, and an awkward route to redemption.
This is all delivered with an exhilarating mix of punchy action and dark humour in prose that snaps like a rope in a high wind. Brookmyre has more than twenty novels under his belt, yet his energy and talent seem to be undimmed. Aficionados will welcome him back; new fans will kick themselves they didn’t discover him earlier; both will enjoy reading this book.
