To The Last Page

All Fun And Games Until Someone Loses An Eye is another typically explosive and humorous Brookmyre scenario where international terrorism and shady undercover agencies runs up against a couple of unlikely ordinary Glaswegians.  When Ross Fleming's top secret work on a device that will revolutionise the weapons industry is leaked, it places him in a vulnerable situation from a lot of wealthy and less than scrupulous businessmen in the arms industry. On the run, Ross turns to his parents for help, and finds an support in the unlikely place of his mother, who has been recruited by a secret, undercover organisation assigned to get him back. Brookmyre reins-in the usual linguistic acrobatics and trades in the usual irony and sarcasm this time for strong characterisation, letting the humour come out of the conflict between them. There is no shortage of thrilling action sequences and tense situations either - straining credibility certainly, but delightfully so.

Well now, this is a pleasant surprise. Brookmyre’s last novel was the first I had read that managed to really break the familiar though hugely enjoyable formula of all his other books - incompetent terrorists or wannabee gangsters getting into explosive siege situations with high bodycounts and an even higher expletive quotient. It was a formula however that was starting to get a bit stale, but with A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil  Brookmyre showed that he was capable of stretching his range a little bit. Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks  goes much further. It might be slightly toned-down and lacking the usual barrage of one-liners, but Brookmyre’s mordant sarcasm and bitter cynicism is still there, and there is no slacking in the writer’s mischievous debunking of the establishment. If anything, his target in Rubber Ducks  is a rather more pertinent one than the usual government-led conspiracies, small-time ned gangsters and anonymous terrorist orga...