Quite Ugly One Morning (Jack Parlabane)

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Er, no, this is a Christopher Brookmyre novel, although the eyes meeting across a crowded room part is true. 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. A 'team-building' weekend in the highlands for lawyers, advertising execs, businessmen, even the head of a charity. Parlabane found the word 'pro-active' enormously useful, as it immediately exposed the speaker as an irredeemable arsehole, whatever previous impression might have been given. When small-time heroin dealer Jai McDiarmid turns up dead one fine Glasgow morning, no one is that surprised - he'd been sleeping with a drug trafficker's girlfriend and had made himself a lot of enemies - so many, in fact, that Detective Superintendent Catherine McLeod doesn't know where to start when she is assigned to the case.

With her initial leads turning out to be red herrings, McLeod struggles to determine the killer’s motive. The fledgling Scottish parliament is in catatonic shock after experiencing its first dose of Westminster sleaze. Irish actor James Nesbitt played Parlabane, and spoke with his own accent instead of Parlabane's Glaswegian one. Determined to get to the bottom of the murder himself, he quickly becomes enmeshed in a wild adventure that will take him through all the strata of Edinburgh society and into some dangerous (and hysterical) situations. However, when the only vehicular access for thirty miles is cut off it seems that events are being orchestrated not just for pleasure.The results range from hard-boiled police procedural to historical whodunit and from the wildly comic to the spookily supernatural. 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. 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. Yet it takes only hours for her life to crumble when her personal details are released on the internet as revenge for her writing. 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.

Comedian Ed Byrne is known for being a fan of this story, as well as a friend of the author: he also chose it for his appearance on Radio 4's A Good Read. There were substantial changes to the plot, with Lime being a more sympathetic character and much of his backstory and political leanings removed. Previously, hitman Darren Mortlake snuck into Posonby's flat on behalf of Midlothian NHS trust administrator Stephen Lime, intending to inject Ponsonby with potassium chloride and make his death look like a heart attack. From his position on high, Parlabane relates the events leading up to his demise, largely concerning the efforts of charismatic psychic Gabriel Lafayette to reconcile the scientific with the spiritual by submitting to controlled laboratory tests. Apart from penning down novels, Christopher Brookmyre has also penned down several fictional short stories, with the most popular one being Bamport Centra.Accidentally waking Ponsonby, a struggle ensues where Ponsonby bites off Darren's index finger and several pieces of furniture are smashed. Investigative reporter Jack Parlabane stumbles across the aftermath of a murder scene in Edinburgh, and when he shows little sign of shock at the gruesome killing of a respected doctor, Detective Inspector McGregor suspects that he is the killer and Parlabane must clear his name. In the year 1996, Christopher Brookmyre was named as the winner during the critics first blood award. Ed Sheeran reflects on love lost, and although he wishes his former partner find happiness, he cannot but admit his feelings are still very much there. Meanwhile, out-of-work actress Jasmine Sharp is doing her best to be a private investigator, but her PI mentor Uncle Jim, who was meant to be showing her the ropes, has just disappeared in mysterious circumstances.