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Christopher Brookmyre
Abacus, £6.99, pp 214
ISBN 0 349 10885 4
Rating: ****
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Christopher
Brookmyre is one of Scotlands foremost young authors, his
acerbic literary career beginning with Quite Ugly One Morning,
an irreverent tale of murder and money grabbing within the Edinburgh
medical establishment.
Quite Ugly
One Morning opens with hungover journalist Jack Parlabane locking
himself out of his flat and attempting to get back in by lowering
himself through an open window from the flat above. But, when he slips
into his neighbours flat he stumbles into a murder
scene—complete with police officers and the corpse of Dr Jeremy
Ponsonby, son of an esteemed Edinburgh medical family. Parlabane
becomes fascinated by the killing—Ponsonby is grotesquely
mutilated and vomit, urine, and blood litter the room he is found
in—and is further drawn in to the investigation when he meets
Ponsonbys
ex-wife.
As the
story unfolds it becomes clear the late Dr Ponsonby was a man in
trouble, having massive gambling debts and supporting his
lifestyle through (very) illegal activities. Further investigation by
Parlabane uncovers a plot among the management of the Lothian NHS Trust
to close the (fictional) George Romanes Geriatric Hospital and sell the
site to private investors to balance the trusts accounts. It
becomes apparent that Dr Ponsonby was part of this plot, by helping
“reduce demand” for geriatric services at the hospital by
hastening the deaths of patients under his care. The storys
loose ends are tied together as the management of Lothian NHS Trust and
the murder are linked by an incompetent hit man sent to silence the
greedy Dr Ponsonby, who was threatening to reveal the scandal to the
media.
Brookmyres writing is
politically charged and morally indignant throughout, with the entire
medical community of Edinburgh—from medical student to esteemed
professor—being lambasted and portrayed as conservative,
uncaring, and self serving. The inability of Brookmyre to say anything
positive about the medical profession is more than a little depressing
and, perhaps, says more about Brookmyres views than anything
else. This should not, however, lessen the impact of this novel, which
distils the horror of the Shipman murders and blends it with anxiety
over the involvement of private finance in the NHS. It should provoke
genuine self examination and consideration of the changes occurring in
British
medicine.
