Christopher Brookmyre

"No, no," said McGregor, smiling grimly to himself. "I think a specimen as magnificent as this one should be preserved intact. Skinner," he barked, turning round. "This jobbie is state evidence and is officially under the jurisdiction of Lothian and Borders Police. Remove it, bag it and tag it."

- Quite Ugly One Morning

Christopher Brookmyre is a Scottish author who writes crime, romance, gothic horror, action adventure, slasher and political stories. Not necessarily in different novels.

Novels include:

Jack Parlabane novels:


 * Quite Ugly One Morning
 * Country of the Blind
 * Boiling a Frog
 * Be My Enemy (or Fuck This for a Game of Soldiers)
 * The Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks

Angelique De Xavia novels:


 * A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away
 * The Sacred Art of Stealing
 * A Snowball in Hell

Standalones (with a few nods to the Parlabane/De Xavia stories):


 * Not the End of the World
 * One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night
 * All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye
 * A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil
 * Pandaemonium
 * Where The Bodies Are Buried

Tropes:

 * Awesome McCoolname: DS Angelique de Xavia - often addressed as "Angel X" - gets special mention.
 * The Caper: The Sacred Art of Stealing has a brilliant heist involving clowns and banks. And a bus, or am I getting confused?
 * Continuity Nod: A lot, also between the different character series.
 * Lampshade Hanging: One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night has one character spending a lot of time dissecting Die Hard before the whole book dives into Die Hard territory.
 * Scotland: The main characters are usually Scottish, and most of his books are set there, even if the whole book isn't a glittering depiction of the country.
 * Shout-Out: repeatedly to Canadian author Robertson Davies' Cornish trilogy - two of Brookmyre's most memorable characters (Jack Parlabane and Simon Darcourt) are named after characters from this (though especially for the Darcourts, they do not resemble them closely) and the last part of the Cornish trilogy, The Lyre Of Orpheus, is the favourite novel of Jane, the Mama Bear protagonist of All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye
 * Shouted Out to by Charles Stross in Halting State.
 * Violent Glaswegian: The vast majority of petty criminals, bampots, numpties and hard men who make up most of the supporting cast of the average Brookmyre novel.
 * Magnificent Bastard: Simon Darcourt. Most definitely Simon Darcourt.