Christopher Brookmyre
Author
Books
Film, TV & Theatre
Books
Chris Brookmyre was a journalist before becoming a full-time novelist with the publication of his award-winning debut Quite Ugly One Morning, which established him as one of Britain’s leading crime authors. His novels have sold more than two million copies in the UK alone, and Black Widow won both the McIlvanney Prize and the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award.
Latest publications:
THE CRACKED MIRROR, Little, Brown, 2024
FORGET WHAT YOU THINK YOU KNOW
THIS IS NOT THAT CRIME NOVEL
You know Penny Coyne. The little old lady who has solved multiple murders in her otherwise sleepy village, despite bumbling local police. A razor-sharp mind in a twinset and tweed.
You know Johnny Hawke. Hard-bitten LAPD homicide detective. Always in trouble with his captain, always losing partners, but always battling for the truth, whatever it takes.
Against all the odds, against the usual story, their worlds are about to collide. It starts with a dead writer and a mysterious wedding invitation. It will end with a rabbit hole that goes so deep, Johnny and Penny might just come to question not just whodunnit, but whether they want to know the answer.
A cross-genre hybrid of Agatha Christie and Michael Connelly, The Cracked Mirror is the most imaginative and entertaining crime novel of the year, a genre-splicing rollercoaster with a poignantly emotional heart.
THE CLIFF HOUSE, Little, Brown, 2023
‘Chris Brookmyre is a genius, every new book of his is a cause for celebration’ — RICHARD OSMAN
‘Keeps you guessing until the very end – after an avalanche of revelations and twists’ — THE TIMES, BOOK OF THE MONTH
One hen weekend, seven secrets… but only one worth killing for
Jen’s hen party is going to be out of control…
She’s rented a luxury getaway on its own private island. The helicopter won’t be back for seventy-two hours. They are alone. They think.
As well as Jen, there’s the pop diva and the estranged ex-bandmate, the tennis pro and the fashion guru, the embittered ex-sister-in-law and the mouthy future sister-in-law.
It’s a combustible cocktail, one that takes little time to ignite, and in the midst of the drunken chaos, one of them disappears. Then a message tells them that unless someone confesses her terrible secret to the others, their missing friend will be killed.
Problem is, everybody has a secret. And nobody wants to tell.
A BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick
‘Strikingly original and definitively Brookmyre – there’s nothing he can’t do’
Mick Herron
‘I recommend The Cut SO HIGHLY! A fast-paced thriller, lovely characters, [and] it kept me guessing’
Marian Keyes
The supremely entertaining, moving, and unpredictable new thriller from multi-award-winning bestseller Chris Brookmyre is a wholly original masterpiece and the best crime novel of 2021.
Millie Spark can kill anyone.
A special effects make-up artist, her talent is to create realistic scenes of bloody violence.
Then, one day, she wakes to find her lover dead in her bed.
Twenty-five years later, her sentence for murder served, Millicent is ready to give up on her broken life – until she meets troubled film student and reluctant petty thief Jerry.
Together, they begin to discover that all was not what it seemed on that fateful night . . . and someone doesn’t want them to find out why.
‘A twisty spiralling rabbit hole of a book that draws you deeper with every chapter. Brilliantly original, compulsively readable, right to the final page’
Ruth Ware
‘Dark, heartfelt, stylish and thrilling, The Cut is the kind of wonderfully original tale I just adore. Chris Brookmyre is a storytelling mastermind’
Chris Whitaker
‘This is a special novel. A brilliant, original, up-to-the-minute tale with all of the dark, edgy, humorous brilliance we’ve come to expect from one of the finest crime fiction writers in the world. The Cut is simply superb’
Abir Mukherjee
FALLEN ANGEL, Little, Brown, 2019
‘Gloriously dark, deliciously twisty’ CLARE MACKINTOSH
ONE FAMILY, TWO HOLIDAYS, ONE DEVASTATING SECRET
To new nanny Amanda, the Temple family seem to have it all: the former actress; the famous professor; their three successful grown-up children. But like any family, beneath the smiles and hugs there lurks far darker emotions.
Sixteen years earlier, little Niamh Temple died while they were on holiday in Portugal. Now, as Amanda joins the family for a reunion at their seaside villa, she begins to suspect one of them might be hiding something terrible…
And suspicion is a dangerous thing.
From Chris Brookmyre, winner of the Theakstons and McIllvanney awards for Black Widow, comes a standalone psychological thriller full of twists, lies and betrayal.
WANT YOU GONE, Little, Brown, 2017
The eighth book in the Jack Parlabane series, from author Christopher Brookmyre.
The award-winning, million-selling author of Black Widow brings a twist-filled story of secrets and lies.
What if your deepest secret was revealed?
Sam Morpeth is growing up way too fast, left to fend for a younger sister when their mother goes to prison and watching her dreams of university evaporate. But Sam learns what it is to be truly powerless when a stranger begins to blackmail her.
Who would you turn to?
Meanwhile, reporter Jack Parlabane has finally got his career back on track, but his success has left him indebted to a volatile, criminal source. Now that debt is being called in, and it could cost him everything.
What would you be capable of?
Thrown together by a vindictive and mysterious mutual enemy, Sam and Jack are about to discover they might be each other’s only hope.
BLACK WIDOW, Little, Brown, 2016
‘A celtic Gone Girl… guaranteed to keep you guessing’ — IAN RANKIN
*****WINNER Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year*****
*****WINNER Bloody Scotland McIlvanney Prize for Crime Novel of the Year*****
Did she do it? Did he deserve it?
Diana Jager is clever, strong and successful, a skilled surgeon and fierce campaigner via her blog about sexism. Yet it takes only hours for her life to crumble when her personal details are released on the internet as revenge for her writing.
Then she meets Peter. He’s kind, generous, and knows nothing about her past: the second chance she’s been waiting for.
Within six months, they are married. Within six more, Peter is dead in a road accident, a nightmare end to their fairytale romance.
But Peter’s sister Lucy doesn’t believe in fairytales, and tasks maverick reporter Jack Parlabane with discovering the dark truth behind the woman the media is calling Black Widow…
‘Black Widow is a stand-out thriller’
Renee Knight, author of Disclaimer
DEAD GIRL WALKING, Little, Brown, 2015
Fiction
| Publication Details | Notes |
|---|---|
2013 Little, Brown | Enter the world of a video game in Christopher Brookmyre's BEDLAM. This is white-knuckle action, sprawling adventure, merciless satire and outrageous humour like you've never experienced. |
2013 Little, Brown | As one battles her demons and the other chases her ghosts, two very different detectives confront the secrets that have entangled both of their fates since before they were even born. How far would you go to protect the people you love? Would you take a fall? Would you take a bullet? Would you take a life? This is Chris Brookmyre's darkest and most complex book yet. |
2012 Little, Brown | The much anticipated follow up to Where the Bodies are Buried - the hugely successful new crime series from Chris Brookmyre Is the devil merely the name we give the worst in ourselves? When private investigator Jasmine Sharp is hired to find Tessa Garrion, a young woman who has vanished without trace, it becomes increasingly clear that there are those who want her to stay that way. What begins as a simple search awakens a malevolence that has lain dormant for three decades, putting Jasmine in the crosshairs of those who would stop at nothing to keep their secrets buried. |
2011 Little, Brown | A move into the mainstream of British crime fiction. Top Ten Sunday Times bestseller |
2010 Little, Brown | A terrifying journey to the boundaries of knowledge and imagination that will trouble your thought long after you have raced tot he final, bloody-spattered page. |
2009 Little, Brown | If society has the B-list celebrities it deserves, it now has a killer to match. Except that Simon Darcourt is a great deal more successful in his career choice than the average talent show... |
2012 Little, Brown | The much anticipated follow up to Where the Bodies are Buried. When private investigator Jasmine Sharp is hired to find Tessa Garrion, a young woman who has vanished without trace, it becomes increasingly clear that there are those who want her to stay that way. What begins as a simple search awakens a malevolence that has lain dormant for three decades, putting Jasmine in the crosshairs of those who would stop at nothing to keep their secrets buried. |
2008 Little, Brown | Do you believe in ghosts? Do we really live on in some conscious form after we die, and is that form capable of communicating with the world of the living?...Aye, right. |
2007 Little, Brown | Put on your uniform and line up in an orderly fashion for the funniest and most accurate trip back to the classroom you are likely to read, as well as a murder mystery like nothing that has gone before it. |
2005 Little, Brown | Jane Fleming, forty-six and three years a grandmother, has always played by the rules, never hurt anybody, never lied, never even had a parking ticket. But she’s about to put all that right in a very big way… |
2003 Little, Brown | Honesty is a virtue. Deceit is a talent. Theft is an art form. |
2003 Little, Brown | Real Life™ blows. Just ask Raymond Ash. As a student, he and his friend Simon thought their futures would be paved with gold discs, gigs and groupies. Instead he’s found himself in his thirties, a nervous new father and an even more nervous new English teacher, facing the fact that responsibility has no escape key. |
2002 Little, Brown | Part political satire, part cliff-hanging thriller this is high calibre entertainment. |
2000 Little, Brown | The occasion: high school reunion. The place: an oil rig converted into a tourist resort. The outcome: carnage. |
1999 Little, Brown | The crew of an oceanic research vessel goes missing in the Pacific along with their mini-submarine. |
1998 Little, Brown | Jack Parlabane returns to investigate the apparently open-and-shut case of a murdered billionaire, accurately figuring that a right-wing media baron had more to fear from his political allies than from the four burglars caught red-handed at the scene. |
1997 Little, Brown | A post-Thatcherite nightmare of frightening plausibility, this is a wickedly entertaining and vivacious thriller, full of acerbic wit, cracking dialogue and villains both reputed and shell-suited. |