Quite Ugly One Morning

Christopher Brookmyre Abacus, £6.99, pp 214 ISBN 0 349 10885 4 Rating: ****

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.