Creator / Christopher Brookmyre

"No, no," said McGregor, smiling grimly to himself. "I think a specimen as magnificent as this one should be preserved intact. Skinner," he barked, turning round. "This jobbie is state evidence and is officially under the jurisdiction of Lothian and Borders Police. Remove it, bag it and tag it."

— Quite Ugly One Morning

Christopher Brookmyre (born 6 September 1968) is a Scottish author who writes crime, romance, gothic horror, action adventure, slasher and political stories. Not necessarily in different novels.

Novels include:

• Jack Parlabane novels:
  • Quite Ugly One Morning
  • Country of the Blind
  • Boiling a Frog
  • Be My Enemy (or Fuck This for a Game of Soldiers)
  • The Attack of The Unsinkable Rubber Ducks
• Angelique De Xavia novels:
  • A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away
  • The Sacred Art of Stealing
  • A Snowball in Hell
• Stand alone books (with a few nods to the Parlabane/De Xavia stories):
  • Not the End of the World ^note though this gets a blink-and-you'll miss it character Call-Back in A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away
  • One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night ^note shares one crucial supporting character with Quite Ugly One Morning and another with Be My Enemy
  • All Fun And Games Until Someone Loses An Eye
  • A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil
  • Pandaemonium
  • Bedlam ^note set in a standalone speculative fiction universe
• Jasmine Sharpe/Cath McLeod novels:
  • Where The Bodies Are Buried
  • When The Devil Drives
  • Flesh Wounds

Tropes:

• Bulungi: Tiny African nation Sonzola gets a few references throughout the Brookmyreverse; most notably, it's where Angel X was born.
• The Caper: The Sacred Art of Stealing has a brilliant heist involving clowns and banks. And a bus, or am I getting confused?
• Continuity Nod: A lot, also between the different character series.
• Lampshade Hanging: One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night has one character spending a lot of time dissecting Die Hard before the whole book dives into Die Hard territory.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Zig-Zagged all to hell in the Jasmine Sharpe/Cath McLeod novels.
• Shout-Out: repeatedly to Canadian author Robertson Davies' Cornish trilogy - two of Brookmyre's most memorable characters (Jack Parlabane and Simon Darcourt) are named after characters from this (though especially for the Darcourts, they do not resemble them closely) and the last part of the Cornish trilogy, The Lyre Of Orpheus, is the favourite novel of Jane, the Mama Bear protagonist of All Fun And Games Until Someone Loses An Eye.
  • Shouted Out to by Charles Stross in Halting State.
• Violent Glaswegian: The vast majority of petty criminals, bampots, numpties and hard men who make up most of the supporting cast of the average Brookmyre novel. With some exceptions, this rarely works out well for the Violent Glaswegian.

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