jack parlabane
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Apparently I’ve also read Be My Enemy. I don’t remember anything about that one, and I only mentioned it in passing there. ↩︎
Boiling a Frog by Christoper Brookmyre (Books 2020, 8)
The last Brookmyre I read was Pandaemonium, in 2010. Before that, his first, Quite Ugly One Morning, before I started writing here. The second of those introduced campaigning journalist Jack Parlabane. There’s another one before this, but you don’t need to read them in order. There are also a stack more.1
Anyway, what’s it like? No bad, as we say in Scotland. It starts off with Parlabane in prison. Part of the story, including how he ended up there, is told in flashback. It’s all set in the early days of the new Scottish Parliament, around 2000, 2001.
It’s a decent page turner, I can’t deny. My main criticism in writerly terms is about the old ‘show, don’t tell,’ thing, which we’ve discussed here before.
In at least one of those pieces I counsel against setting that injunction in stone. But it’s notable how much of this novel violates or ignores it. For large chunks of the flashbacks we’re told what happens. It’s fine. The writing style flows and it doesn’t feel like infodumps, but I was certainly aware of it.
Worth reading. I’ll probably read more of him, eventually. Still looking for a sequel to Pandaemonium, though.