A Snowball in Hell...

Christopher Brookmyre’s new book A Snowball in Hell features blackmail, gun battles, magic and the torture of various reality TV stars. All kinds of great stuff. It also sees the return of some familiar characters, namely thief and magician Zal Innez from The Sacred Art of Stealing, and Glasgwegian supercop Angelique de Xavia and the villainous Simon Darcourt from A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away. The book’s launch will be an open event in The Liquid Room in Edinburgh, and will feature music performed by Billy Franks, the former front man of The Faith Brothers. “I’ve been a fan of Billy’s music for more than 20 years, since I saw The Faith Brothers supporting The Alarm at Barrowlands in 1985” says Brookmyre, who has taken two of his book titles, The Country of the Blind, and The Sacred Art of Stealing, from songs by Franks. So, he says, “I thought I should see if he’d want to come up – I know he hadn’t played in Scotland for 20-odd years”, and Franks agreed.

It’s particularly appropriate that a talented musician should play at this launch. “The book’s largely about talentless musical wanabbes, and about when you’ve got a character like Zal Innez who’s got genuine talent, it shows how much work you have to put into something to make you good at it” says the author. “So I thought, let’s have someone who is really good, playing good music as part of this.” In the book, there’s a talent contest called Bedroom Popstars, where you don’t even have to sing – just mime. It seems all too likely. “Part of the genesis of this book” Brookmyre says, “was that despite not watching reality TV, you can’t help learning lots about it, you know the names of loads of folk off of these programmes without having to watch them, you know all sorts lots of details about their lives” and so, he sums up, “It’s the information equivalent of secondary smoke inhalation”.

So the infamous supercriminal Simon Darcourt returns, and takes an interest in these shows, kidnapping a series of very punchable celebs that the police, including Angelique de Xavia, have to try and find. Brookmyre says “Simon Darcourt in the past has gone after soft targets, and desperate celebrities are a fairly soft target” - so Darcourt allows a certain form of wish fulfilment. “Folk think, ‘yeah, what a pain in the arse all these celebs are’” Brookmyre says “and it’s amusing to think of appropriate punishments that they might undergo. But nobody would actually subject them to this kind of stuff - so Simon does”. It’s extremely malicious too, and all the more entertaining for it.

Brookmyre seems to have a certain affection for his protagonists. “I was thinking that I did want to bring these characters back, and finally an idea came to mind that I could explore”. He adds that this book is different, because “it’s a sequel to two separate books. So in a way it has to deliver what was in both of those, even though the tone of those was quite different. So I waited a long time for the book to be right and then I got them back”.

Somehow, this dual sequel merges the tone of the earlier books successfully. Of course, Brookmyre always blends styles well, in that he typically writes crime fiction with comedic elements. “From the experience of seeing movies,” he says, “when you’re watching a film that’s a good thriller but has lots of funny moments, that’s fine, but what really never works is when somebody’s trying to make a comedy that’s also a thriller”. This approach seems to have worked very well for him.

And now that he’s finished this book, he gets to organise its launch. So at The Liquid Rooms “I’ll read, and Billy will play a wee bit, and then we’ll have a Q&A and hopefully it’ll be a bit more like a launch party than just a normal event. I’m very excited by the prospect of it”. And, he adds with a grin, “since he’s staying with me I can nobble him in terms of the playlist, and get him to play some of the songs I want to hear”. Good work.