I returned this book without finishing it but I did give it a good three hours before calling it a day.

Scotland has often been depicted as a land of haunting, misty moors and literary genius. But Scotland has also been a place of brutal crime, terrifying murder, child abuse, and bank robbery. Crime can strike anywhere. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, he attended the University of Glasgow. He later married an anesthetist, with whom he has a son. He is an art-thief par excellence and she is a connoisseur of crooks. Her job is to hunt him to extinction; his is to avoid being caught and he also has a secret agenda more valuable than anything he might steal. The crew of an oceanic research vessel goes missing in the Pacific along with their mini-submarine. An evangelical media star holds a rally next door to a convention in LA devoted to 'nubile' cinematic entertainment. The cops know there's going to be trouble and they are not disappointed. Here's a view from someone who hasn't read the book before watching the movie. And I have to say, I can't agree with those who think this is a bad movie.This song captivates me still, after 50+ years. Takes me to the deep South and the poverty of some who lived thru truly hard times. And the powerful spirit of a poor young girl being abandoned to her future with only a red dress and her wits to keep her alive. What an absolute pile of pants. Having read Chris Brookmyre's books religiously since I came across "Quite Ugly...", I was delighted to find out that this drama had been commissioned. Nesbitt plays a journalist who has a really bad hangover (the quite ugly one morning in the title) who walks in to a neighbors flat to find him brutally murdered, he then has to find out what happened. Another sub-plot is the relationship between Nesbitt's character and the police officer on the case, this is a bit distracting from the main plot and doesn't really fit in the story, A good sub-plot is about a hit-man (the one that performed the murder, revealed early in the story) with a missing finger who then stays at a bed and breakfast who kills the owners (annette Crosbie) dog and tries to dispose of it, this is an interesting and entertaining sub-plot that doesn't have relevance on the story.

Truth was, if you were going to believe something, it was best to believe in stuff that made the world seem a more interesting place.” 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.All the characters in this story are interesting, even the bad guy, who you really can't wait to see get his comeuppance. The pacing of the story keeps you guessing, but gets you to the end at a gallop. Angelique De Xavier, his previous nemesis, is drafted onto the police team trying to bring this one-man celebrity hate-fest to an end. But she can't do it alone, she needs the magical skills of her lover, only she doesn't know where Zal is and meanwhile a whole load of celebs are, literally, dying to be famous. Amid the flying paintballs and flowing Shiraz even the most cynical admit the organizers have pulled some surprises - stalkers in the forest, power cuts in the night, mass mobile phone thefts, disappearing staff, disappearing guests: there's nothing can bring out people's hidden strengths or break down inter-personal barriers quite like not having a clue what's going on and being scared out of your wits.

My TV guide listed this as a detective movie, which it isn't, really. It's just a light-hearted drama, that focuses more on the several sub-plots than on the main story. And there are quite some sub-plots. A clumsy assassin-subplot, an ex-girlfriend-subplot, even the cliché policewoman-falls-in-love-with-the-main-character-subplot. The main story isn't surprising at all, there are no deep motives or intriguing relations. The main plot is subsidiary to the numerous sub-plots. And that's no problem at all for this movie - the sub-plots are interesting enough by themselves. 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. What they didn't foresee was the presence in their state of a Glaswegian photographer with an indecipherable accent and a strong dislike of hypocrisy or of a terrorist who seems to have access to plutonium as well as Semtex. Gavin Hutchinson had it all planned out. A unique "floating holiday experience" on a converted North Sea oil rig, a haven for tourists who want a vacation but without the hassle of actually going anywhere. And what better way to test out his venture than to host a fifteenth-year high school reunion, the biggest social event of his life, except no one remembers who Gavin is.

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. Each from a different perspective, Dalziel, Parlabane and Slaughter look into the murder. There are several possibilities too. For one thing, Ponsonby was known to have a gambling problem, so one of his gambling lenders might have decided to make an example of him. Then, there’s his ‘hospital life.’ He might easily have made enemies there too. As the three get closer to the truth, it becomes clear that Ponsonby’s murder is the proverbial tip of an iceberg. There is much more going on than it seems on the surface, and if Parlabane can stay alive long enough, he’ll have a career-making story. Certainly a story to listen to again, highly entertaining and even when you know whodunnit, these are characters well worth re-visiting. In the famous novel “Animal Farm” by George Orwell, a group of farm animals is ruled by which animal? This story has a political thread running through it. Without spoiling the plot, I think I can say that readers who are interested in the way health care, politics and government work (or don’t work) together will be pleased. The novel raises some interesting and scary issues.There is also a great deal of wit, both in the dialogue and in Brookmyre’s writing style. Plenty of the humour is what I would call cheerfully profane, and readers should know that some of the descriptions in the novel, especially of the crime scene, are not at all for the faint of heart. But it is all in keeping with the screwball noir kind of story that this is. Despite the wit, the story itself is very sobering. I don’t want to give spoilers, but the prospects raised by the story are frightening, mostly because when you strip the fictional elements away, they’re not that far from possibility.

There are risks he can take without jeopardizing his plans. He can afford to play cat-and-mouse with the female cop who's on his tail; it might even arguably be necessary. All across the USA, people are showing up dead. The deaths don't appear to be connected in any way until one particular death occurs and gets the Secretary of Defense's attention. He arranges for a task force to investigate. The story is set in Scotland so obviously a Scottish narrator suits perfectly. David Tennant has an extremely expressive voice, keeping the dialogue entertaining and the narrative passages engaging. Plus, he has a dead sexy voice that's no hardship to listen to either! We've been asked whether "Somewhere Only We Know" is about a specific place, and Tim has been saying that, for him, or us as individuals, it might be about a geographical space, or a feeling; it can mean something individual to each person, and they can interpret it to a memory of theirs... It's perhaps more of a theme rather than a specific message... Feelings that may be universal, without necessarily being totally specific to us, or a place, or a time..."Nesbitt is probably the best thing in this show - and even he doesn't quite fit. How anyone can read the book, and then adapt it to this piece of dross is beyond me. Each "chapter" ends with some jazzy music as though to underline a joke has just been told. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood but I didn't find it either funny, intriguing and I didn't really care what happened. Detective Superintendent Catherine McLeod has one major Glaswegian gangster in the mortuary and another in the cells for killing him - which ought to be cause for celebration. Catherine is not smiling, however. From the moment she discovered a symbol daubed on the victim's head, she has understood that this case is far more dangerous than it appears on the surface, something that could threaten her family and end her career. That, and his wife has discovered his philandering ways and plans to leave him with a very public announcement in front of his assembled guests.