Until she lived through the horrors of a gruesome death herself. One morning Millie woke up to a blood-soaked scene to rival those she created on film. Her lover dead, she went to prison. The other main character, Jerome, is a young, mixed race first-year university student, raised by a grandmother who has also recently died. Jerome is also shy in his own way, frightened of not fitting into any world. As a consequence, he has sometimes made bad decisions like joining a small-time robbery gang. After his grandmother’s death, he vowed to change his ways and enrolled in a university program — Film & TV, and Politics. Meanwhile Jerry is a film-loving fresher at a Glasgow University who's said goodbye to his days as a petty thief and burglar after the deaths of two elderly people forced a crisis of conscience. Somewhat. And not if his dangerous past associate has his say. Struggling with life in the halls, Jerry answers an ad to live with three old ladies, including the sharp-tongued Millicent. Two people split by more than five decades, but both harbouring secrets and guilt and feeling like they can't find their footing.

In the early days, when I wrote Quite Ugly One Morning, I just wrote about all the places that were literally on my doorstep,” he explains. “I was staying on McDonald Road in Edinburgh at the time and a lot of the action takes place within about one square mile of where I was living, because I would go out for walks to see these locations. And that’s always been the case. You’re somewhere quite mundane and everyday so you project something really unusual on to it. Danby looked wary, wondering what he was missing. It was Jerry’s turn to draw attention to their audience. Bampot Central was shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Macallan Short Story Dagger in 1997. The tension builds up to almost unbearable levels by the time Jerry has to reveal a deadly secret he’s been keeping from Millicent. If you’ve nothing to hide, why not open your door and let us take a look. Because I’d put down a hundred to one that my Galaxy’s in there.’Art Alexakis of the band Everclear has been thanked by Brookmyre inside the front cover of two of his books - Be My Enemy and The Sacred Art Of Stealing. Brookmyre has said that Sacred Art was inspired by the Everclear song 'Unemployed Boyfriend' from the album Songs from an American Movie Vol. One: Learning How to Smile. This is the song which the lead character, Zal Innez, discusses with Angelique De Xavia. De Xavia is stated by her brother to spend her evenings alone "drinking supermarket merlot and listening to that depressing Mogwai rubbish" in The Sacred Art of Stealing. The first name for Innez, as well as the inspiration for the costumes worn by his gang of bank robbers, are taken from Zal Cleminson, guitarist for The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, who always wore Pierrot makeup on stage. Parlabane is a fan of Skids and Big Country and Jasmine Sharp goes to see Twin Atlantic perform live in one of her books. I was selling my ancient iPod because I was skint. Not everybody’s daddy sets them up a trust fund,’ he added. Putting Scotland at the centre of his books was both a deliberate choice and a result of the way Brookmyre’s imagination would wander while travelling around the country. It started out close to home.

The story revolves around two characters: Jerry, a young student who is interested in horror movies including the “video nasties” of the 80s, and Millicent who was a brilliant make-up effects artist who worked on them. Millicent, now in her 70s has recently finished a long sentence for a murder during a film shoot of which she has no recollection, when Jerry comes to share the house in which she lives. Between them, they begin to suspect that Millie was framed and a twisty plot emerges in which sordid goings-on emerge, involving government ministers, rich media tycoons, mafia gangsters and so on – plus the inevitable Lost Tape. Jerry could tell from the warden’s expression that this had landed. He did remember seeing Philippa on Dumbarton Road. It was too late to deny that he had been in the shop, or even that she had seen what she thought. After Mildred discovers some important information, all thoughts of suicide evaporate. Then, Mildred and Jerome bond in their mutual love of horror films (and the fact that he saves her life). Much of the humour in this story comes from the banter between Mildred and Jerome as they jostle for points re their knowledge of films/TV dialogue. I must admit that though I knew about two-thirds of these films, I didn’t remember hearing any of the dialogue “points” that Mildred and Jerome acquired during this banter, but I did appreciate the contest. Phew! This is a fun read to a point. I found the opening chapters hugely enjoyable and the depressed Millie a very interesting character and was looking forward to how it all played out. This sounds almost collaborative with expectations from readers, some of whom have been with him from the start, influencing part of the process.As one battles her demons and the other chases her ghosts, these two very different detectives will ultimately confront the secrets that have entangled both of their fates since before Jasmine was even born. The warden’s right. I don’t have the right to search your room. But believe me, I’ll be keeping an eye out for that phone, and if I see you with anything like it, I’ll be going to the police.’ I saw the guy behind the counter give you money,’ Philippa mumbled uncomfortably, looking at her shoes. Siege Mentality, 2017 (ebook only - short story. Originally published as The Last Siege of Bothwell Castle in the Bloody Scotland anthology)

The Cut is set around films and horror ones particularly. It has two narrators. Jerry, young, and a rather light fingered student of film. Millicent, far older, and was a make-up artist on 80s horror films; she was accused of murdering her boyfriend and served a long sentence for the crime. As I write this I'm thinking that this does not sound like my sort of book. I'm not a "film" person and dislike horror particularly. However these rather off the wall ingredients made for a decent read in my mind. The boy wouldn’t have made a card player. There was a quivering twitch to his bottom lip as he realised his mistake and the Jenny Dalziel is an Edinburgh CID officer, part of Hector McGregor's team as a DC in Quite Ugly One Morning, who becomes a close friend of Parlabane and appears or is referenced in most of his books. She is openly gay and in a relationship with a woman called Maggie who has survived breast cancer by the time of Dead Girl Walking.Angelique de Xavia, the diminutive but deadly police officer from A Big Boy Did it and Ran Away, The Sacred Art of Stealing and A Snowball in Hell. Zevon and Bruce Springsteen feature in the second novel, Country of the Blind. The band 'Savage Earth Heart' in Dead Girl Walking share their name with a song by The Waterboys. Jerry opened his door, and there, of course, was Danby, with his two wingmen hovering behind, and that lassie Philippa, who was always staring at him like he was a sideshow freak.

Chris Brookmyre likes to mix it up – while he excels at crime, from his brilliant early novels to his recent thrillers, all with different, meticulously researched themes, he also writes historical novels with his wife and does a side turn in space for some SF books with our fellow imprint Orbit. The Cut has echoes of his earlier work, with the assured style of where he is now. He pulls no punches, but don’t be put off by the horror-movie theme in this; I am firmly against the entire genre (sorry) but loved the way it plays into the story here: Millicent, the main protagonist, has had an amazing past of being a horror make-up artist, which leads to her being on set of a notorious film and ending up twenty-five years later just getting out of prison. Jerry, a film student and Millicent’s lodger, is thrown rather violently into her world and helps to turn her self-destructive streak into a quest for justice as they are forced to go on the run in international manner. Are you going to ask everybody else to open their doors, and are they to remain under suspicion if they don’t?’ Then her son Ross, a researcher working for an arms manufacturer in Switzerland, is forced to disappear before some rather shady and dangerous characters persuade him to part with the secrets of his research. The ladies are adamant at first, but Jerry says he is used to lived with the older generation. He lived with his grandmother until she died. So, when they agree for him to take the room. The unlikely friendship between Jerry and Millicent begins and with his help decides to find out the truth what happened to Markus all of them years ago and to prove her innocence. The pair go from Glasgow to all love Italy to find out what happened to Markus but, they are not alone in their quest and they realised they are being followed. consequences of it. He’d claimed he’d lay a hundred to one, but Jerry was the guy who had named the stakes.The Cut bears a superficial resemblance to Denise Mina’s Conviction – a woman investigating her own past life among the super-rich, an odd couple on the road in glamorous foreign locations. Both books even have a yacht in them. The Cut, though, is less exuberant, given all that Millie has already lost. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that she and Jerry are both damaged in their way. Millicent Spark, make-up artist and murderer, has been set free after twenty-four years spent in the gaol for a crime she still considers herself innocent of. From an active, successful, creative professional woman of early middle age she has become a frail, agoraphobic, self-doubting old granny that seems unable to deal with the outside world after half a lifetime of prison. Millie decides not to be a burden on the two old ladies who have taken her in after her last relative died. After all, she has been practically dead to the world since 1994, since that morning when she woke up covered in the blood of her boyfriend. It’s better to accept her fate and exit the scene on her own terms. Folk like Danby weren’t plagued by questions about their place in this world. Wherever they went, they knew they had a right to be there. From the moment Jerry turned up, they were just waiting for him to become a problem. Or were hoping he’d become a problem so that they would have a pretext for getting rid of him. The Cut is a Fast forward to today and Millie now in her 70s, is house sharing with women of a similar age, and a year out of jail. She finds it hard to adjust and has nothing and no one left in her life. She has planned her own suicide and the date is fast approaching.