I had to hang around a medical imaging facility for most of a
day, so I looked for a book in my BritNoir stash that didn't
have a gruesome title or a gross cover. _Quite Ugly One
Morning_ stars an investigative journalist who stirred up too
much trouble in London, fled to Los Angeles, and, having just
escaped assassination in LA, arrived in Edinburgh. Hung over
and in his underwear, he manages to lock himself out of an
apartment a friend has lent him and winds up in the apartment
of a man who has been recently, gruesomely, and grossly
murdered. Of course, he investigates.
This is a comic romp, occasionally
too much so. His editor could have done him a favor by
cutting some of the junior high humor--the bathtub bubbles
scene, for example. Then again, he did make me laugh to the
extent that people expected me to read the funny part, and
how can I explain that a murderer for hire attempting to
inject his victim has just stuck the syringe in his own
forehead? So you can read the book for laughs, and it works
very well.
But it's also a book of social
criticism. Talking heads here in the U.S. tell us that the
National Health in Britain doesn't work because of its
"socialism" and that attempts to cure our medical ills with
steps in that direction will lead to long waits for urgent
surgery, higher death rates, and soon the fall of
civilization as we know it. Brookmyre assigns the blame to
the Trusts. The Thatcherites apparently invented some
combination of HMOs and health insurance companies and then
put them in charge of the hospitals. They take the brunt of
the comedy-rage, long with venal newspapers and "it must have
been a hard-up junkie" police.
I also learned some sneaking-around
tricks. Supposedly, you can hang a picture you took earlier
in front of a surveillance camera. The same view will appear
on the monitor, although somewhat out of focus, and you'll be
hidden behind the photograph.
A lot of this Britnoir seems to take
place north of the border. Is this a new Scottish
Renaissance?
Joy, who's just begun _He Died with His Eyes Open_; our
protagonist doesn't go out of his way to make friends, does
he?
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