Description

SHORTLISTED for the MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2016. WINNER of the SALTIRE SOCIETY FICTION BOOK of the YEAR 2016. The year is 1869. A brutal triple murder in a remote community in the Scottish Highlands leads to the arrest of a young man by the name of Roderick Macrae. A memoir written by the accused makes it clear that he is guilty, but it falls to the country’s finest legal and psychiatric minds to uncover what drove him to commit such merciless acts of violence. Was he mad? Only the persuasive powers of his advocate stand between Macrae and the gallows. Graeme Macrae Burnet tells an irresistible and original story about the provisional nature of truth, even when the facts seem clear. His Bloody Project is a mesmerising literary thriller set in an unforgiving landscape where the exercise of power is arbitrary.

Publisher Review

"Spellbinding ... Riveting, dark and ingeniously constructed." - Edmund Gordon, Sunday Times. "The book's pretence at veracity, as well as being a literary jeux d'esprit, brings an extraordinary historical period into focus, while the multiple unreliable perspectives are designed to keep the audience wondering, throughout the novel and beyond. This is a fiendishly readable tale that richly deserves the wider attention the Booker has brought it." - Justine Jordan, The Guardian. "An astonishing piece of writing... a voice that sounds startlingly authentic." - Jake Kerridge, The Telegraph. "Gripping, blackly playful and intelligent, it deserves a space on the shortlist. It's one of the few that may set the heather - and imagination - ablaze." - Robbie Millen, The Times. "Graeme Macrae Burnet's His Bloody Project is a gripping crime story, a deeply imagined historical novel, and gloriously written - all in one tour-de-force of a book. Stevensonian - that's the highest praise I can give." - Chris Dolan, Book of the Year, The Herald. "The Man Booker judges got it right: this really is one of the most convincing and engrossing novels of the year." - David Robinson, The Scotsman. "A real box of tricks... a truly ingenious thriller as confusingly multilayered as an Escher staircase." Jake Kerridge,Express. "A historical revenge tragedy and courtroom drama... [are] at the heart of this masterful psychological thriller." Ian Stephen "Masterful, clever and playful. It is every inch the riveting second novel I had hoped for." Louise Hutcheson, A Novel Bookblog.