Gritty Glasgow combined with a personal story and introduction to Jasmine Sharp, Brookmyre’s young novice private detective. Alternating chapters describe her investigation in search of her uncle who is also her new boss, with that of police detective Catherine McLeod's inquiry into the illicit drugs business. As the story progresses their investigations eventually merge. This is a tightly plotted mystery that has the reader hooked from the first page. Tough without being bloody and with the natural ironic humour associated with Glasgow. I can't wait to read more Jasmine Sharp episodes. ( )

Enjoyable enough to read book 2.

I dated this as 3 stars, only because I didn't find it as really riveting. The two, seemingly unrelated, storylines kept me wondering when they would merge. Instead of adding to the mystery I found it to be a bit distracting. The storyline(s) formed a complex, realistic mystery where the good guys/bad guys wasn't a clear black and white. The ending was in some ways as fulfilling as real life. I loved the author's use of language. I will read the next book in the series to see Jasmine's continued growth. ( )

First in Jasmine Sharp PI series

Catherine McLeod is a detective with the Glasgow police, and as such spends most of her days counteracting and cleaning up after the various vendettas and score-settling perpetrated by members of the Glasgow underworld against each other. Jasmine Sharp is a PI in training who must step up to the plate when her boss and uncle Jim goes missing. Catherine's and Jasmine's paths eventually intersect, and what they discover along the way has potentially explosive consequences.

This was my first Brookmyre and will not be my last. I greatly enjoyed the atmosphere of Glesca, with the judicious use of dialect by the characters, name-checking of streets and descriptions of landmarks. It provided just the sort of atmosphere I was looking for in a Glasgow-based mystery. I also liked that both protagonists were women -- not that I go out of my way to seek female-centric novels, but it's nice when they arrive on my bookshelf. The book is tough without being gratuitously violent, and while it is said to be more serious than Brookmyre's usual fare, the narration and character descriptions still had some very wry notes that had me chuckling to myself as I read.

I would definitely recommend this if you're looking for a little taste of Glasgow in mystery form or enjoy noir leavened with a bit of humour. ( )

Review: Where The Bodies Are Buried by Chris Brookmyre.

Brookmyre has a profound individual style of writing. It didn’t take me long to get wrapped up in the book because his ability to raise the tension within the story never failed to captivate my interest. The story was extremely structured, well developed characters, a multi-layered mystery thriller that was easy to follow within a Scotland setting. The dialog was constructed to sound true to a Scottish accent and slang words of clarity throughout the book with an incredible height to the conclusion.

The book has two storylines that interacted between chapters and were cleverly connected as the book comes to an end. The first story begins with a violent death of a Glasgow thud which was investigated by Detective Superintendent Catherine McLeod. She is a mother of two rowdy young boys and married to a video game designer nine years younger then her. Catherine’s high confidence leaves her with a strong independent streak that allows her to reset the demands of solidarity imposed by her peers. Her investigations are usually cases involving drugs, police corruption, and gang feuds. This case starts to frustrate her when it appears to be hampered from agencies within the police force which also involves the biggest organized crime group in the city. The story was action packed and a thriller to the end.

The alternate story starts with Jasmine Sharp who is an out-of-work actress who is temporally employed by her Uncle Jim who is a private investigator. They are both working together on the usual insurance claims, fraud cases, missing person cases and scams that make up the majority of their work. Jasmine had insecurities and she believed that she would mess up any task she tried to do. That was the reason her acting career had become choppy. While working with her Uncle Jim she was fumbling through a lot of jobs and kept telling herself to shape-up… Than one day Uncle Jim goes missing and Jasmine discovers he had been working on a couple of long-standing missing person cases that may be linked to his own disappearance. One of the cases involved Anne Ramsey’s parents and baby brother who disappeared and the other an ex-gang enforcer and debt collector named Glen Fallan (I really liked this character). Both cases were more than two decades old.

The two stories were slow connecting but the crimes and action never stopped which kept me turning the pages. Brookmyre is a good writer and the book was an enjoyable read….
( )