Customer Reviews

Broken Skin

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First Sentence: Up ahead the woman stops.

DS Logan McRae is faced with trying to identify a man whose naked, bloody body was dumped outside the hospital emergency door. When a fellow officer identifies the victim, it leads McRae into the world of bondage sex and pornography. McRae's girlfriend, PC Jackie Watson, has caught a violent rapist. Unfortunately, he turns out to be a superstar footballer with an alibi.

In a strange way, this reminded me of McBain's 87th Precinct books but with much less likable characters. McRae tends to jump to the wrong conclusions just come out fine in the end. Jackie is focused on justice, even at the cost of bending the law. The two commanders, Steele and Insch, are believable bosses from hell. Somehow, it all came together into a book that held my interest straight though and was a really good read.

What a different type of mystery. I listen to so many mysteries on audio and it almost get to be ho hum, just another mystery. Not this one!!!! This is SO different. Not for the faint hearted though. This is the first ever story I have listened to of Stuart MacBride I didn't even realise is was the third in a series. Not a problem, easy to follow and just don't be surprised if your eyes fly wide open and you have a silly shocked look of your face at time while listening to parts of this story!!!!!

Pedophiles, rapists, an 8 year old killer, BD SM porn kings filming themselves in the act and an undercover female policewoman dressed up to look like a hooker to catch a killer.

Very fast pace story. The wonderful Scottish accented narrator did a great job!!!!!

I rarely give a 5 star but story is SO different it deserves it!!! I highly recommend it.

This is the third in a fabulous series by Stuart MacBride. The author writes gritty crime books featuring Detective Sergeant Logan McRae. The books are set in Aberdeen, Scotland and the writer is able to paint a picture of the city. I studied there and reading McBride's description is bringing the city alive for me again.

But, more than that, MacBride's characters are human. Logan McRae makes mistakes and has his moments of glory, which makes him a fantastic main character. He screws up at work and in his private life, but he is not the typical 'tragic hero' for whom everything goes wrong. Rather, he has his ups and downs just like everybody else. The storylines are incredibly well-written and it is difficult to put the book down. MacBride portrays crime and crime solving in a very realistic way which contributes to making the characters come alive.

And, if I had known when I lived in Aberdeen, that the coppers went to Archibald Simpson's for a drink after their shifts, I certainly would have shown up there once or twice... !!!

MacBride doesn't miss a beat in Bloodshot, the latest entry in his excellent Aberdeen, Scotland based series featuring Detective Sergeant Logan McRae. In the beginning of the book Logan's girlfriend Constable Jackie "Ball Breaker" Watson lives up to her nickname while busting a suspected serial rapist. When that suspect turns out to be a popular football star with a seemingly unshakable alibi who calls upon the services of a despicable solicitor and the sympathies of a gullible public, things, as usual, get complicated. McRae's personal life gets complicated too, as a misunderstanding with Jackie causes him to finally act on his long suppressed attraction for Rachael Tulloch, the deputy Procurator Fiscal. MacBride combines the mundane, the horrific and the ridiculous skillfully to produce another enormously satisfying read.

Along with Ian Rankin and Denise Mina, MacBride is a leading figure in a Scottish crime wave that's producing some of the best mysteries in the world. The writing in this series is always great and the weather in Aberdeen is always awful.

I'm not usually one for hard-boiled police procedurals, but I love Stuart MacBride's books, and I really enjoyed this one. I'm reading them out of order, as I discovered him just a year or two ago. In a way it is sort of fun, because I get to see Logan McRae's life before I first met him - kind of like digging into someone's past.

The trademark MacBride touches are here: lots of foul language, politicking and infighting police officers, gritty Aberdeen. To be honest, the plots themselves aren't unique - there's one involving a dead porn star whose into the bondage/domination scene, one murderer who is only 8 years old, and a series of breakins. But MacBride is such a great writer! None of it ever feels forced, and the people feel real, from foul-mouthed chainsmoking DI Steel to fat angry Inspector Insch, who surely must grab his heart and fall down dead in one of these books, given the rage the fills his life.

Holding it all together is Logan McRae, one of my favorite cops. I love that MacBride doesn't make him infallible. McRae makes A LOT of mistakes while also doing lots of things right, so that he's perpetually walking the line between receiving department commendations and being fired. Sometimes he's a bumbler, which leads to some comic moments (a nice change of pace from the grittiness), but he always has a good heart. He feels like an island of sanity among the Grampien Police Department, who are always trying to shove their work off onto someone else, less senior. Guess Scotland's not that different from the United States!

MacBride's books tend to be long and this one is definitely longer than your average mystery. I would say I noticed that occasionally, but the pacing is good and MacBride's writing just carries you along. I would not say they are for the faint of heart, but they are darn good. If I was single and fictional, Logan would own my heart.

This is the third book by Macbride with the Logan McRae character and it doesn't disappoint. There is quite a cast of characters including DIs Steel and Insch. Throw in several constables, coroners and of course WPC Watson as Logan's significant other you have a lot of entertainment. The crimes and criminals are so gruesome that the bits of humor thrown in help alleviate some of the graphic violence. The interplay between Logan and his bosses, Steel and Insch make for interesting reading. The story takes place in Aberdeen, Scotland which, as described by the author, is a very dreary, depressing place. This novel deals with a serial rapists, a murderous eight year old boy and a vareity of other minor criminals who tend to frustrate Scotlands finest. This series is sometimes compared to the Ian Rankin Inspector Rebus novels but they are really quite different. Rebus is grittier and more cynical than McRae and the stories much darker. They are actually two excellent series of books that appeal to anyone who likes British/Scottish crime stories. Well worth the read.

MacBride has become my favorite crime thriller writer. Against the dreary backdrop of Aberdeen, Scotland, a wonderful cast of police characters, gathered around detective sergeant Logan McRae, fuss and stumble through their investigations, surviving embarassment after embarassment, until they finally and spectacularly solve the crimes. MacBride's characters are each unique and droll. And MacBride has a Wambaugh-like sense of cynical humor with which he peppers his books. This book explores, among other things, the bondage, sado-masochism scene in Aberdeen with eye-opening detail. All in all, this is another wonderful book from the word processor of Stuart MacBride.

I find MacBride's books exTREMELY grating and annoying, and yet I read them. When in need of a decent mystery to pass the time, I will read one. Only when I'm done to throw it down in disgust and say Never again! And then I will...

MacBride is a classic case of someone who needs a d*mn decent editor! Everything is there. Great potential. But the writing is so d*mn repetitive at points that you just want to shoot yourself. Come on! Prune it down!!

In this book, I just wanted to kill myself if I had to read ONE MORE REFERENCE to Inspector Steel and her cigarettes. EVERY TIME she appears he has to mention her smoking, looking for a cig, lighting one up, complaining of not having one, inhaling--you guessed it--"deeply." It practically ruined the book for me. In fact it did.

I find Jackie Watson an incredibly unrealistic, annoying, ridiculous character. I wouldn't want to spend two minutes with her. She is completely unrealistic. No policeman/woman would be that volatile and emotional and unable to control themselves. Or if so they would be fired immediately. The same with Isobel. In fact his female characters are just all offensive and annoying.

MacBride also has an extremely unnecessary tendency to be obscure and confusing. You're in the middle of one story, then he switches for a few pages to some scene with totally different characters, a chase or whatever and you are going "WTF?" Why? What's the point? Why confuse us? You're not James Joyce. You're writing a thriller, not experimenting with narrative form.

And yet DESPITE so many things I still finished it and read the next one. I like his plots and the male characters at least, and when he isn't being tedious or confusing, it's a perfectly entertaining thriller that you want to read.

A GOOD editor would weed out all the superfluous junk and just present a clean, well-written novel. That is not what we have here.

For all my complaining, though, I would definately recommend MacBride over most new mystery writers today.

I actually read this as Broken Skin (the UK title). I have another 4-5 of MacBride's book on my to-read shelf, and they will stay there a while--not because Broken Skin (I'll use the UK title) is bad, but rather because it's a disturbing work, and it deals with a very seamy underside of society. I think it's rather like finding a maggoty mouse corpse in your basement--you know that from time to time there will be others, but you'd prefer not to find another just yet--you'd like something more cheerful for now.

James Swain has a new book--Midnight Rambler--about pedophiles and such. That book has huge holes in the plot: Broken Skin is what Midnight Rambler should have been. There are plenty of unpleasant villains in Broken Skin--pedophiles, rapists, an 8-year-old killer, B-D S-M porn kings, etc. In Midnight Rambler, as in too many books, the villain must be a super-evil mastermind. In Broken Skin, the villains are not masterminds, but instead are mostly rather ordinary (other than their criminal activities)--and much more believable. Neither are the police geniuses--they succeed through ordinary groundwork, information-gathering, and some good or lucky guesses.

I didn't find myself drawn to any of the characters--not like towards Tony Soprano or Robbie Coltrane in the Cracker series. I had just finished Stephen Booth's new book Dying to Sin: this and Broken Skin are both procedurals, both take place in rather gritty areas, both have police working on different crimes, but Broken Skin had plenty of tension, whereas Dying to Sin did not. In the former book I'd often read a dozen more pages to see what was going to happen, in the latter book I'd put it down for the night with no regrets. Broken Skin/Bloodshot is a solid book, but it isn't light reading.

Bloodshot is the third mystery in Stuart MacBride's series featuring Detective Sergeant Logan MacRae. The story takes place in Aberdeen, Scotland. MacRae is working on three cases that all demand his attention.

The first case involves a famous football player, Rob Macintyre, who is the main suspect in a serial rape case. After MacRae's girlfriend, Constable Jackie Watson, is attacked by Macintyre while working undercover, he is immediately arrested as the serial rapist that they were after. Unfortunately because of a lack of evidence and a tough lawyer, he is let go and free to rape more women.

While trying to work the cases, MacRae is put into a tug of war between his superiors on which case is more important for him to work on.

Detective Inspector Steel is a tough-talking, chain-smoking lesbian who demands MacRae's attention on a different case. Detective Inspector Insch is obese and easily angered by MacRae. He wants him working the Macintyre rape case. Insch is positive that Macintyre is the culprit no matter what other evidence might prove otherwise.

The second case involves a murder committed by an 8-year-old boy named Sean Morrison. After stabbing an old man with a knife, Sean has disappeared and the cops can't find him anywhere. There is something more sinister going on for such a young boy to change so drastically into a murderer. What went wrong in his life for him to change so suddenly?

The third case involves a man whose dead body was dumped at the hospital. He was brutally sexually tortured until he bled to death. After some investigating they find out that this man was involved in the porn business and the S&M scene. Who killed this man? Was this a sexual escapade gone terribly wrong?

Bloodshot is a fantastic police procedural/detective mystery that will keep you guessing until the last page is turned. I enjoyed this well-plotted mystery and will look for the previous books in the series.

Armchair Interviews says: Bloodshot is a great book that mystery fans will inhale in one.