The Cracked Mirror - Chris Brookmyre

Have you ever wondered what would happen when when a cosy crime Miss Marple-style sleepy village murder mystery runs up against a gritty LA crime drama with a maverick police detective who plays it as hard as the criminals? No, me neither. That unlikely scenario however is what Chris Brookmyre proposes in his latest crime thriller. Obviously though with Brookmyre, there is going to be a postmodern twist on this and presumably some knowing humorous tongue-in-cheek playing with the conventions, but that doesn't entirely redeem the fact that you have to read what amounts substantially on both sides to a work of standard crime fiction by numbers. To be fair however, even if you have a good idea where it is headed, Brookmyre manages to keep this enormously entertaining throughout.

It's always been joked about that you would never invite Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple to your country home or go on holiday with Hercule Poirot, as you're practically certain of having a murder on your hands and being one of the likely suspects. You can rely on the case being effectively resolved certainly, but inevitably at the cost of at least one of the guests you are entertaining. Can you imagine what it must be like to live in the same village as them? That seems to be the case with the sleepy Perthshire village of Glen Cluthar in the Christie-like titled The Cracked Mirror, where a greater number than the national average of people meet an untimely death, but few at least remain unsolved due to the presence of one long-term elderly resident.

Penelope ‘Penny’ Coyne (insert eyeroll emoji here) is just back from a two month cruise to find that Mr Brendan Gault, a businessman who has recently taken up residence in Glen Cluthar, has been found dead in the confessional at the church of St Bride's. He was not a popular figure, his business interests threatening the comfortable equilibrium of the town, and it looks like a move to the same village as Penny Coyne was not a wise one. Nor does it look like a wise move on the part of Chris Brookmyre, whose early works were littered with messy murders and foul-mouthed terrorists planning massacres. You can only hope that the author has a good spin on this venture into cosy crime.

I'm not sure you are going to find it any more promising however when we are suddenly in LA, where maverick police detective Johnny Hawke is on the trail of an elusive smuggler, or he will be once he gets out of the bed he slept in with the nurse who patched him up last night. After trading some smart sharp exchanges of dialogue with his new rookie partner - Hawke's partners have an unfortunate habit of getting themselves killed - he no sooner manages to wrap up the chase than he is sent to look into the suspected suicide of a writer in a Hollywood movie studio, Kingdom Pictures. Not quite so cosy this. 

Not too original either. Somehow however, both Penny and Johnny have the strange feeling there is something odd about these cases as well as the impression that they have forgotten something important. The two stories come together when Johnny, having been told to hand over his badge and gun and taken off the case (yes, even he is vaguely aware of the cliché), flies to Scotland for a wedding, looking for the partner of the murdered man for personal reasons. The wedding is one that also brings together a merger of two families in the publishing business, and - would you believe it? - it takes place in Perthshire and Penny has also received an invite. A big social event like this, with powerful people involved and Penny Coyne invited - you'd think they'd know better - you can expect that a murder is on the agenda, and strangely, Hawke notices some unsettling similarities to the case that he has just been taken off.

Chris Brookmyre can be hit and miss for me. He's a terrific writer when he is following his own ideas and, without having to delve too far back, in recent times I've been impressed with the science-fiction of Places in the Darkness, the child abduction thriller Fallen Angel, the giallo inspired The Cut and his brilliant Raven and Fisher period medical thrillers co authored with Marisa Haetzman as Ambrose Parry. (The Cracked Mirror incidentally also seems to partly thrive on the unlikely male and female partnership involved in investigating crime, the man professional and useful in taking the hard hits, while the woman has a way to gain trust easier and get to the places where a lighter touch is needed). I personally find Brookmyre's work less compelling when he appears to be following in the heels of a trend, whether it's the Gone Girl of Black Widow (which nonetheless won crime writer awards) or the modern spin on Agatha Christie in The Cliff House.

It doesn't take a genius or constitute a spoiler to work out that we are in Stuart Turton-like meta-fiction territory here, and while the methodology of that eventually becomes clear - and doesn't really surprise anyone familiar with such tricks - The Cracked Mirror has its own literary spin on the genre. It feels like Brookmyre is again picking up on a trend in literature and finding his own way to use it to consider certain concerns about advances in modern technology. It doesn't really offer anything new here, but with strong central characters and plenty of twists and turns, it remains hugely entertaining throughout.

Reading notes: The Cracked Mirror by Chris Brookmyre is published by Abacus on the 18th July 2024 in hardback and as an eBook. My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the preview advanced proof copy. Always keen to see what Chris Brookmyre comes up with next. This one is not particularly original, but has all the potential to be a big mainstream seller.