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He was also delighted to have the opportunity to explore a part of Scotland that he doesn’t know well, even if the weather wasn’t terribly welcoming: I still enjoyed it, but I have read better executions of a similar story, like Guest List, for example. Seven women. Seven sins. One night of judgment. Jen Dunne is forty-two and getting married for the second time, but that doesn’t mean she can’t go all out for her bachelorette weekend. She’s taking her closest friends to the kind of place that has a years-long waiting list for a three days of super-exclusive luxury accommodation on a remote Scottish island. So excited by the complicated means of transport required to get to the island, no one gives much thought to the implications for getting off again, especially if the weather should turn. But why would they? They’re in for a time they will never forget. Just not for the reasons they imagine. Chris Brookmyre recently sat down with The Big Thrill discussing his latest domestic thriller, THE CLIFF HOUSE. In theory a hen party should be the chance for the bride to celebrate with all the people she loves around her, but the reality can be different. “Once I put them all in a room together I began to get to know how they would behave.
Parts are quite chilling especially about who is controlling the narrative although I do guess correctly I also enjoy how all the secrets come leaking out as water through a sieve deepening the plot and the mystery of who the ultimate target is. A novel is such a major undertaking; there’s the writing of it, of course, then you’re spending months and months revising, polishing, and then promoting it. How did you know this was the book you wanted to spend the next couple of years on?
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Thank you to Chris Brookmyre and Scarlet Suspense for my complimentary copy. All opinions are my own. I’m sorry to be so critical. The prose is good and others who enjoy this genre may well like the book, but for me it was just a string of stale, implausible characters and situations. I hope that Brookmyre will hive us another Parlabane book, but it seems that his other fiction is really not for me.
The whole thing felt pretty stale from the start to be honest; a party in a cut-off island location where several people have “history” and the organiser is worried about how everyone will get on...seriously? Again? And then the first part of the book seemed to go on forever as each person arrived and we very slowly learned a bit more about them, their relationship to the others and that each one has a Dark Secret and is worried about That Thing They Did being exposed – without, of course, telling us what the Secret or the Thing is. I got to the eye-rolling stage fairly early on in the book – and it got worse as absurdities and clichéd situations mounted up, so I was muttering “for heaven’s sake” (I paraphrase) pretty regularly until eventually I gave up because life was too short. When you first created your protagonist for this book, did you see an empty space in crime lit that you wanted to fill? What can you share about the inspiration for that character? The great Scottish outdoors is where Chris does a lot of his plotting for his novels. “I like being outdoors I like walking,” he says.
Advance Praise
Then came reveal after reveal, each more ridiculous than the previous one and had me rolling my eyes as the story descended into an over the top, ridiculous story. It was all just too much and totally ruined the book for me. It felt like the author was throwing out absolutely everything he could think of into one story. I feel like the twist in the book was good and there were believable red herrings leading up to that point. I could have done without so much of the inner monologues and the dynamics between characters, as they took me out of the action sometimes. I found Jen to be a mostly likable character, and felt like I understood the intentions of all of the characters, which seemed realistic even if not likable. The end of the book tied up everything a bit too neatly in my opinion but I didn’t hate it. Jen is soon to be married to Zaki and she has booked a very luxurious retreat for her hen weekend. She is joined at this remote Scottish island by a few friends from the tennis club (Nicolette and Kennedy), two of her oldest friends (Helena and Michelle), her soon to be sister-in-law Samira and Beattie, the sister-in-law of her first marriage to Jason. Marissa and I did an Ambrose Parry event at Conversations on The Coast about this time last year and we were really quite taken by it – it was a full house and we had a really warm response.”
The trope of a group of wealthy people with secrets stranded on a remote island has become very popular recently. Rather than bumping guests off one at a time, however, this focuses on the friendships, old and new, between the women - not all of whom know each other. There are past grievances and new suspicions, with each guilt-ridden hen desperate to keep her own secret - but at what cost? Brookmyre skilfully turns the spotlight onto each one, and I defy anyone to unravel the mystery before the final reveal. When it is the winter months coming in, having somewhere for people to gather and in a cosy environment for a cosy discussion certainly seemed to create a conducive atmosphere to talk about books,” he enthuses. Chris Brookmyre on books – what’s he reading?
Customer reviews
As well as Jen, there’s the pop diva and the estranged ex-bandmate, the tennis pro and the fashion guru, the embittered ex-sister-in-law and the mouthy future sister-in-law. Being isolated from friends during the pandemic that led to me thinking about the family of friendship and different levels of friendship. The isolated-place murder mystery is one I’ve always enjoyed, and I’ve liked quite a few of Brookmyre’s books in the past, so I thought it would be fun to give this one a try. Our isolated place is a small Scottish island with a luxury manor house that is rented out for retreats and small gatherings. This time it’s a weekend-long hen party before Jen’s wedding to her fiancé Zaki. Instead of a close circle of friends, she’s invited women from various stages of her life, from her childhood to her young adulthood, and including her sister-in-law-to-be, Samira, and her sister-in-law from her first marriage, Beattie. Some of these women already know each other and some don’t. Two, in particular, know each other and have bad blood between them from when one, Michelle, dumped her bandmates, including Helena, to become a solo act, going on to fortune and celebrity. It also turns out that Beattie is hostile to Jen, thinking that she wrongfully accused her first husband and Beattie’s brother, Jason, of being mixed up in criminal activity before he disappeared 10 years earlier. I do read a lot of crime fiction,” he says, “a lot of it written by my friends because you do end up becoming friends with writers.
Thinking about The Cliff House in particular, he says: “It’s very much about, if you put a whole lot of people on a small island and they realise somebody dangerous is on the loose and you’ve got this contained environment, the reader can be sure that all the components are already there.
Chris Brookmyre is a prolific author of crime fiction and one half of the highly successful Ambrose Parry writing partnership along with his wife Marisa Haetzman. You might have known someone for ten years and you don’t really know anything intimate about them and equally there are people you have known your own life can be more of a threat to you because they know all your secrets. They say that confession is good for the soul, in this case it’s a restitution, a price for absolution but for what? It’s Jens hen weekend in a luxury Cliff House located on Clachan Geal a tiny island south of Barra in the Outer Hebrides. Guests include her childhood friends as well as her future sister-in-law and a new friend of the last few months. Each of them has reasons to be uncomfortable about at least one of their companions and following a couple of dramatic incidents they are told the price of their freedom is confession. It becomes a game of survival. Somewhere isolated might seem quite sinister while at other times it might seem paradoxically secure because you are away from what you are afraid of.” The Cliff House and ‘the toy box’ Jennifer is forty-two and getting married for the second time, but that doesn't mean she can't go all out for her bachelorette weekend. She's taking her closest friends to the kind of place that has a years-long waiting list for a booking: three days of super-exclusive luxury accommodation on a remote Scottish island. So excited by the complicated means of transport required to get to the island, no one gives much thought to the implications for getting off again, especially if the weather should turn. But why would they? They're in for a time they will never forget. Just not for the reasons they imagine.
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