I wanted to write a reporter character who got all the good lines | Books | Entertainment

Written in just eight weeks when he worked as a sub-editor on an Edinburgh evening newspaper, Chris Brookmyre’s Quite Ugly One Morning was a literary sensation nonetheless. Introducing cynical, ­ wise-cracking investigative reporter Jack Parlabane, its mix of humour and bizarre violence turned convention on its head. While Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard were acclaimed in America for their dark, ironic and openly funny thrillers, UK publishers viewed the combination as akin to the plague – best avoided at all costs.

However, with three unpublished traditional thrillers to his name and oodles of ambition, Chris remained blissfully ignorant of literary tastes. “I used to write for football fanzines and I’d had a subscription to Private Eye since the age of about 15, so I’d always been drawn to the humorous and the satirical,” the Glasgow-born author explains today. “So when I wrote Quite Ugly One Morning it made sense. “I didn’t know anything about commercial viability – otherwise I might not have bothered – but I knew that it flowed in a way my previous attempts hadn’t.

“It wasn’t as if I identified a gap in the market though, I just stumbled into it. I was quite surprised how well it did because I thought it would be far more niche. But I’d grown up reading Ian Fleming, Douglas Adams and Robert Ludlum so my idea of an adult novel was something with a secret underground base or sci-fi social satire.”

Parlabane, an inveterate crosser of lines in search of truth, justice and a great scoop, was based in part on Adams’ intergalactic hitchhiker Ford Prefect – albeit set against the bitter background of almost 18 years of Tory government. “He was a bit of a wish-fulfilment character,” says the 57-year-old. “We’d all like to believe there’s an investigative reporter out there who’ll go to any lengths to get to the truth and that might include breaking into places, hacking into things.”

The inspiration for the book, featuring a corrupt Scottish hospital trust, patients being bumped off and a deranged hitman, was based on stories Chris’s wife, Marisa Haetzman, told about working as an NHS anaesthetist. “These were issues I was interested in and I didn’t want to write a procedural, I didn’t know enough about the police, whereas I did know the world of journalism so I thought I’d write a reporter character who gets all the good lines and is fun to be around.”

With its standout cover and irreverent attitude, Quite Ugly struck a chord with readers and critics and Chris’s career was off at a trot. It was turned into an ITV drama in 2003 starring a young James Nesbitt as Parlabane – albeit playing Chris’s character in his Irish accent, rather than as a Scot – not bad for a debut writer.

He’s since published another 30 books, including a series of hit historical thrillers co-written with Marisa under the pen name Ambrose Parry, and won nearly every crime-writing prize going. Now, 30 years after his debut, and nine years since Parlabane’s last appearance in Want You Gone, the fan favourite is back.

“Suddenly the arse has fallen out of the print medium and you’re reviled because of the things that have been exposed,” explains Chris. Social media and influencers are taking over while the nation is gripped by culture wars – something he wanted to explore. Jack’s coming to terms with the fact he’s given his whole life to this job and wondering if it was worth it because he’s got a failed marriage, he doesn’t have kids and the job hasn’t loved him back as much as he loved it.”

More jaded than ever, he’s in need of a big scoop to stay afloat, quite literally as it turns out when he’s sent undercover on a liner crossing the Atlantic to solve a cold case murder. On board are members of a Succession-style media family, the Maskyns, intent on exploiting a revival of interest in their 1960s Thunderbird-style TV puppet show, The Imaginators, while hosting a fan convention.

“It’s been around for decades but has enjoyed a new lease of life because of a role-playing game that’s led to renewed interest in a possible reboot,” says Chris. “But because it dates from the Sixties, they’re re-evaluating how a lot of it is a bit problematic, some of it looks racist or sexist. So you’ve got the anti-woke crusaders professing outrage at it being changed to meet political sensibilities.”

Meanwhile, an Elon Musk-style tech-bro type has flown in to make the Maskyns an offer for the rights – as long as they agree to it now. With the liner approaching the point at which they’re out of range for a rescue, tensioons are rising. And when Parlabane finds himself in a darkened stateroom with a blood-covered body – with an ex-detective superintendent on the hunt for the killer, it’s a locked-cabin mystery he needs to solve fast or he really is sunk.

Chris will be appearing at a special guest at this year’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrrogate on July 24, interviewed by his friend and collaborator in banfd The Fun Loving’ Crime Writers. His novel, The Cracked Mirror, was shortlisted last year as Theakston Old Pecluier Crime Novel of the Year.

It didn’t win (Hunted by Abir Mukherjee took the prize, supported by the Daily Express), but Chris previousy took home the prestigious gong in 2017 for Black Widow. And The Cracked Mirror won the McIlvanney Prize for best Scottish crime book of the year 2024 so it wasn;t esactly a flop!

Joining the Cheltenham Literature Festival at Sea on the Queen Mary 2 in 2024 with Marisa provided Chris with the chance for some Transatlantic research. “I thought, ‘How am I going to handle the fact that you can’t get off?’” he smiles. “But it’s huge, so you don’t feel like you’re cooped up and there was only one day where you weren’t allowed outside because of the weather.

“I couldn’t have written the same book without having been on it. That whole thing Parlabane gets obsessed with, that for a few days you’re out of helicopter range, means you’re constantly aware of the isolation. There’s this weird disconnect between the opulence and the sense that you’re on this big hunk of metal outside of the rescue zone.”

Probably a good time to lose yourself in a book, then.

• Quite Ugly One Evening by Chris Brookmyre (Little, Brown £22) is out now