The Cliff House - Chris Brookmyre

"They had been on the island less than five hours and already the whole thing was falling apart".

For just for a brief moment at the start of The Cliff House I thought I caught a glimpse of something recognisable as the Chris Brookmyre of old. Opening with that ominous first line, it seemed like classic Brookmyre. Ok, a hen party on a remote island is a little different from those classic thrillers but who knows whether the island mightn't turn out to be the base for a terrorist group on manouvres, planning an assault on the Scottish parliament or at least a unit planning to kidnap and hold the entirely fictional leader of the Scottish Conservatives there for ransom. If only...

But no, while there are flashes of humour and self-awareness in the characterisation, there is more than an air of Agatha Christie than Tartan terrorism to The Cliff House. Seven women in their 40s, two of whom have a longstanding grudge against each other, although an ex sister-in-law and a new one hold potential for other conflicts ahead. On a remote unpopulated island, albeit in a luxury mansion kitted out with the latest hi-tech (although with a patchy mobile reception natch), will they get on or will it turn into a murder- mystery killing spree? The fact that Jen's fiancé has been acting strangely and deleting emails to a mystery account definitely points to trouble ahead, albeit promising nothing particularly original.

Jen has just made a fortune selling her bakery business, specialising in muffins. About to be married to Zaki, she has invited a select group of friends to her hen party on the remote unpopulated Scottish island of Clachan Geal. Her old schoolfriends Michelle and Heather were formerly in a successful rock group together, but there is animosity between them now since Michelle went solo and became a major celebrity. Also there is Nicolette, who works for a major fashion house, Beattie, the sister of Jen's ex- (disappeared) husband Jason, Samira, the sister of fiancé, and Kennedy, their tennis instructor. Also there is Lauren, property speculator and owner of the house. With a mixture of flaky characters, some with a history between them, secrets, jealousy and resentment, we have a recipe for trouble.

Evidently. Which is the point of this kind of thriller. You know the drill. It's just a matter of time, but sooner rather than later there will be a murder, it's just a question of who will be first. Someone, apart from Jen (we expect) has arranged to got them all together on a remote island, and when the inevitable body turns up, they find all the communication channels have been cut. Is the first murder the only one, or is someone outside the group going to pick them off one by one? Or since they all have issues and grudges, it could someone in their group. Messages from someone called the Reaper tell them that one of the ladies is not who she appears to be and they want that person to confess and make reparation. The problem is that they ALL have secrets they don't want their friends to know about.

It's surely not too much to expect that the closed murder-mystery situation will develop in a direction similar to one of Brookmyre's best books. Although his output has been varied (in quality and genre) since the scathing satire of his Jack Parlabane books, there are flashes of brilliance in his more recent co-written 'Ambrose Parry' books and Fallen Angel, which in my estimation might be the best thing he has ever written. Unfortunately, despite playing with convention, mixing Real Housewives with Agatha Christie and giving it a Brookmyre spin, The Cliff House is still ridiculously contrived and mainstream friendly. Which of course doesn't mean it can't at the same time also be a compelling thriller. You'll probably find this is just as/almost as entertaining as the average Brookmyre, but far from his most original or best work.


Reading notes: The Cliff House is published by Little Brown on the 28th July 2022. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance proof copy. The proof copy suggests that the original title for the book might have been 'She Knows', based on a Balaam and Angel song covered in the book by Michelle Cassidy as the song that made her famous. That would have been a bit of a generic title, making it indistinguishable from other bestseller thrillers of this style, but I think it's a better fit than The Cliff House.

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