I need to get back on track with this - not really the reading, it’s not too far behind, but with the writing about the reading!

Christopher Brookmyre is a frustrating author - by that I mean that several of his books are really good, and yet others fail to live up to these high expectations.

This book lies somewhere in between - I want to say I love it, yet I also want to say I hate it!  The problem, for me, lies in that in some books (and in some parts of this book) his narrative style heads off on a bit of a rant about something or other.  Normally it’s about the state the world is in currently and while that’s fair enough it does tend to drag on a bit.

I’ve no idea what Brookmyre the man is like, it may be that he writes like this because that’s how the main character of the books should be thinking and to reinforce that point, or indeed it may be that this is what he himself is like.

Either way, I’m not a huge fan of the tedious drawnout stuff which in turn should make me less of a fan of his work.

However, once that stuff is out of the way his stories rip along at a cracking pace with a huge dollop of humour thrown in for good measure.  It’s hard to pigeonhole his work as being one genre or another as it genuinely is funny, yet at the same time the story is generally speaking very exciting and keeps you on the edge of your seat as any thriller should.

Barring certain sections, this is one of my favourite Brookmyre novels and is to be recommended however I’d take his last offering, Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks, over anything else.