Snag A Snowball In Hell Curated By Christopher Brookmyre Accessible In Publication

society has the Blist 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 contestant, He's also got the media taped by the simple expedient of bypassing them completely and posting his killings on the Internet, Yet another trilogy that I intentionally spread out over ayear period, . . simply because I didnt want it to end, Ill miss Brookmyres sharp wit and cultural commentary, Angelique is a oneofakind badass character, and she deserved the ending she got, Funny, as per usual.
It's a brilliant book when you don't know what's going to happen, Probably won't include it in my next Brookmyre rereading spree though, because with the deception gone and plot twist anticipated as I was reading it second time I found myself little tired of the everpresent ranting tone and seriously wished that someone shut Simon the hell up earlier I probably wished the same last time, just with the mystery awaiting I'd made through his chapters faster or so it'd seemed.
Still had fun, though, Angelique is an awesome character for one thing, and I enjoyed her perspective immensely, It was great to see Zal again, too, and their storyline was nicely played, Also, it was quite enjoyable to all those moments when you could get cheated and to know how they'd play out,
Crime novels hailing from the Northern Tier seem to take on the stereotypical national qualities of their places of origin, The Scandinoir a term I'm desperately trying to push into the mainstream I've read tends to feature grimly dysfunctional protagonists, tons of selfgenerated angst and lots of windswept gray seas just what you'd expect from the lands that brought us Strindberg and Ibsen.
Tartan Noir, on the other hand, seems to revel in its own bad behavior protagonists and antagonists alike have rougher edges, dirtier mouths, bigger chips on their shoulders, and more developed senses of humor though it's usually pretty dark, as befits a nation that's spent most of the past two millennia fighting against and usually losing to its southern neighbor.


Take A Snow Ball in Hell, for instance,

Simon Darcourt a highfunctioning psychopath recently made redundant from his job as freelance terrorist by the influx of so many other psychopaths willing to work for free has decided to better the state of British civilization by killing Blist "celebrities" in wholesale lots.
He stages madeforrealitysnuffTV extravaganzas around his exploits and dares the British public to look away, which, of course, it doesn't, The confounded police bring in mixedrace, terroristhunting Glasgow cop

Angelique de Xavia to try to track down Darcourt again, Yes, again she's done it before in an operation that ended in Darcourt's supposed death, As it turns out, she's not the only one hunting Darcourt, nor is he the only one she's hunting, and the hunters are hunting the other hunters as much as they're trying to flush out Darcourt.
Hilarity and lots of corpses ensue,

Brookmyre, a Scot, gives the stage in turn to each of his principal characters and even a couple bit players, but his main mouthpieces are de Xavia, a bank robber/magician named Zal Innes, and of course Darcourt.
As he did in sitelinkWhere the Bodies Are Buried, the author's able to present a credible and affecting inner life for his main female character, a "wee dark lassie" who's turned into a crack undercover investigator at the cost of her soul.
Zal's a charismatic baddish boy who fell hard for Angelique during their last runin and she for him and is tortured by his simultaneous needs to be with her and to stay away from her he's a gifted magician who monetized his skills through performanceart robberies of large banks that were more crooked than the people robbing them.
But the author's affection is clearly for Darcourt, whose firstperson rants are so insane they make perfect sense, and whose outrage at the squalid tabloidfueled manufacturing of disposable celebrity is so heartfelt you'll find yourself wondering why he doesn't exist in the real world.
His firstchapter selfintroduction is a tour de force of attitude, characterization and bravado,

The plot looks like a ball of yarn after a pack of kittens has had its way with it, which is part of the fun.
You know the author's taking you somewhere, though God knows where the tangles and switchbacks and triplecrosses are entertaining as you run across them, even though you'll lose track of who's doing what to whom a few pages later.
Darcourt's plots and setups are so elaborate scams covering up other scams, backup plans multiple layers deep they remind me more of Mission: Impossible than anything that would happen in the real world, and he's not the only one.
Everybody's playing threedimensional chess in this one, This overcleverness, paired with the overtidiness of its ending, is one of the reasons I knocked off the better part of a star from my rating.
The roller coaster's fun, but some way through I stopped believing any of it was real and just went along for the ride.


As mentioned, Brookmyre is Scottish and so are his characters, and they speak that way, You won't need subtitles, though an occasional Google lookup might be in order, A more important cultural issue one that helped knock off that fifth star: how uptospeed are you withBritish junkcelebrity lore Characters namedrop relentlessly, assuming you know what they're talking about.
I imagine that Darcourt's victims are tweaked versions of real Dlisters that I'd totally recognize had only I been following the Daily Mail for the past decade.
You say you open the Sun only for the Pagegirl Oh, dear I'm afraid the jokes will fly right over your wee haid.


This is book three of a trilogy, a fact the book doesn't trumpet, I just thought the characters had unusually detailed see: convoluted backstories, You've been warned.

A Snow Ball in Hell is a fun, twisty, profane, hyperattitudinal story that will keep you wellentertained while not hiding the fact that the author's messing with you throughout.
If you've ever thrown things at your TV during X Factor, you'll love the premise, Just put your disbelief in a locked closet while you're reading and revel in the knowledge that this novel could never be set in Oslo.
Finally someone who understands how I feel about Big Brother, Pop idols, The X Factor and Britain has no talent, Several times I've told work colleagues I would only watch Big Brother if there was a tank of pirahnas/sharks or a serial killer involved.

Fast paced, sarcastic wit and a great heroine, a few twists and turns and the return of Zal, Took my time reading it because I didn't want to devour it in one go and then sit starring at the bookcase, Most enjoyable murder/mystery/satire, Brookmyre rips into the cult of celebrity whilst dragging us screaming down a corkscrew switchback ride of a plot, Not quite as packed with action as "A Big Boy Did It" or quite as clever as "The Sacred Art of Stealing", this is a fitting final book to the series, with a bit of suspense, a bit of fun and a bit of romance.
The ending was very neat perhaps a bit too tidy, A fitting end to a fun series, .