His Bloody Project (Burnet)

His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae
Graeme Macrae Burnet, 2016
Skyhorse Publishing
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781510719217


Summary
Finalist, 2016 Man Booker Prize (Shortlist)

A brutal triple murder in a remote Scottish farming community in 1869 leads to the arrest of seventeen-year-old Roderick Macrae.

There is no question that Macrae committed this terrible act. What would lead such a shy and intelligent boy down this bloody path? And will he hang for his crime?

Presented as a collection of documents discovered by the author, His Bloody Project opens with a series of police statements taken from the villagers of Culdie, Ross-shire. They offer conflicting impressions of the accused; one interviewee recalls Macrae as a gentle and quiet child, while another details him as evil and wicked.

Chief among the papers is Roderick Macrae’s own memoirs where he outlines the series of events leading up to the murder in eloquent and affectless prose. There follow medical reports, psychological evaluations, a courtroom transcript from the trial, and other documents that throw both Macrae’s motive and his sanity into question.

Graeme Macrae Burnet’s multilayered narrative—centered around an unreliable narrator—will keep the reader guessing to the very end. His Bloody Project is a deeply imagined crime novel that is both thrilling and luridly entertaining from an exceptional new voice. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1967
• Where—Kilmarnock, Scotland, UK
• Education—B.A., Glasgow University; M.A., St Andrews University
• Awards—Scottish Trust New Writer's Award; Shortlist, Man Booker Award
• Currently—lives in Glasgow, Scotland


Graeme is one of Scotland’s brightest literary talents. Born and brought up in Kilmarnock, he spent some years working as an English teacher in Prague, Bordeaux, Porto and London, before returning to Glasgow and working for eight years for various independent television companies. He has degrees in English Literature and International Security Studies from Glasgow and St Andrews universities respectively.

His first novel, The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau (2014), received a New Writer’s Award from the Scottish Book Trust, was longlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award and was a minor cult hit. Set in small-town France, it is a compelling psychological portrayal of a peculiar outsider pushed to the limit by his own feverish imagination.

His second novel, His Bloody Project (2016), has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016. He is currently working on another novel featuring Georges Gorski, the haunted detective in The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau. (From Saraband Publishing.)

Book Reviews
For a "semiliterate peasant," he has recorded a testament so "sustained and eloquent" that the Edinburgh literati suspect a hoax. Not so Roderick’s lawyer, Andrew Sinclair, who marvels at the prisoner’s graceful writing and command of language even as he’s sickened by the conditions under which people like the Macraes must toil. But the lawyer’s defense may not be enough to counter the contemptuous testimony of men like the bigoted prison surgeon, J. Bruce Thomson, who contributes his own sour observations to the medical reports and witness statements presented in court. Thomson’s examination of the prisoner confirms his view that criminal behavior is determined by heredity. In Macrae’s case, though, what might be inherited is sheer desperation.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times Book Review


[A] powerful, absorbing novel…. Fiction authors from Henry James to Vladimir Nabokov to Gillian Flynn have used [an unreliable narrator] to induce ambiguity, heighten suspense and fold an alternative story between the lines of a printed text. Mr. Burnet, a Glasgow author, does all of that and more in this page-turning period account of pathos and violence in 19th-century Scotland…. [A] cleverly constructed tale…. Has the lineaments of the crime thriller but some of the sociology of a Thomas Hardy novel.
Tom Nolan - Wall Street Journal


Burnet is a writer of great skill and authority...few readers will be able to put down His Bloody Project as it speeds towards a surprising (and ultimately puzzling) conclusion.
Financial Times (UK)


Fiendishly readable.... A psychological thriller masquerading as a slice of true crime.... The book is also a blackly funny investigation into madness and motivation.
Gaurdian (UK)


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 (Books of the Year).
Chris Dolan - Sunday Herald (UK)


Psychologically astute and convincingly grounded in its environment, this study of petty persecution and murder is a fine achievement from an ambitious and accomplished writer.
Richard Strachan - National (UK)


I disappeared inside the pages of Graeme Macrae Burnet’s His Bloody Project.... [F]ascinating.
Seattle Times


Burnet has created an eloquent character who will stick with you long after the book is read.
Seattle Review of Books


Both a horrific tale of violence and a rumination on the societal problems for poor sharecroppers of the era.
Time


One of the most convincing and engrossing novels of the year.
Scotsman (UK)


A truly ingenious thriller as confusingly multilayered as an Escher staircase.
Daily Express (UK)


There is no gainstaying the ingenuity with which Burnet has constructed his puzzle.
Telegraph (UK)


(Starred review.) [F]ascinating.... The Rashomon-like shifting of perspectives adds depth to the characters and gives readers the pleasure of repeatedly reinterpreting events.... [T]his is not a bleak book. Rather, it is sly, poignant, gritty, thought-provoking, and sprinkled with wit.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Clever and gripping.
Library Journal

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