‘What is about to be engaged with here is essentially a paradigmatic prospective assemblage intended to render a dynamic orchestration of employee energistics across multiple vertices. Through a system of non-apparent motive vehicles, we will seek to initiate from within the disintegrated participatory constituents an innovated focus-drive generating a core-gravity that will channel exertory critical impulsives complementary and bi-reflexive vortals ...’
Jack Parlabane is an investigative journalist of the old school, always suspecting the worst on the part of politicians, clergy or corporate puppets and usually proven right. He made it his life work to expose their shenanigans, which often put him in the cross-hairs of his enraged targets. After being framed with murder, jailed and stabbed in the belly for his investigations, Jack tries to take it easy in the office when he receives an unsolicited invitation to the grand opening of a new business: a luxury weekend at an isolated Scottish Castle for a team-building exercise from a company named Ultimate Motivational Leisure [ ‘The ultimate test of what you’re made of, the ultimate journey of self-discovery, the ultimate vision of what you could become.’ Plus canapes and a turning-down service. Tick box for vegetarian dining option.’]
Jack Parlabane has all the rights to be suspicious of this invitation. After all, given his past articles, the marketing team behind the weekend junket cannot expect him to write a congratulatory note on the proceedings.
‘Aren’t you even curious as to why I’d even be thinking of offering something like this to you?’ Maria asked.
‘You mean to me in my capacity as an investigative journalist with better things to do than write advertorial guff for your Travel pages, or to me in my capacity as a cantankerous cynic who thinks any company bearing the word Ultimate in their name should be summarily asset-stripped and its named directors forced into alternative careers as performers in coprophile fetish hardcore videos?’
Still, his investigative mind is engaged and Jack Parlabane heads off into the high moors with his au-pair invitee, Tim Vale, a retired Cold War spy. At the very least, there should be plenty of booze, right?
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I’ve read all the previous Parlabane novels, plus a few of Brookmyre’s stand-alone novels, so I was really looking forward to this. I had some slight reservations about Jack Parlabane being carried away by his hatred of Margaret Thatcher and of her sycophantic followers, manifested in frequent rants against the System in previous books, but in this fourth episode the author has chosen to go back to his humorous roots and to his crazy, bloody, anarchy-filled plots. The story I was most reminded of here is my very first book by Brookmyre [ “A Fine Day in the Middle of the Night”] where you have a similar situation of a group of near strangers isolated on an oil rig that is assaulted by terrorists.
At the Highlands Castle, the organizers of the weekend junket promise a memorable experience of war games and scary situations that will forge new bonds between participants, but things very quickly take a turn for the worst in a sort of bampot Battle Royale where survival until Monday is very much in doubt.
A bampot is a sort of mentally handicapped bully of the Scottish flavour, and Jack Parlabane has quite a long history with them, so its difficult to decide which of his former investigative targets is now trying his best to kill him. I’m not going to reveal the identity of the adversary in my review, just promise you will have a horrified laugh at the sort of survival mayhem Parlabane and his friends soon find themselves engaged in. Among the Team Defence members, Emily the temp cook assistant was my favourite, reminding me of the blonde bimbo from “Under Siege”
I had so much fun with this action / black comedy caper that deserves a movie adaptation by Edgar Wright, I almost passed over the more serious debate about our thirst for violence and about the licence to kill that most governments take for granted. Tim Vale, who as a former spy has a long experience with extra-judicial murders, has something to say about this, a reminder that the Jack Parlabane books are not only about the laughter and the gratuitous violence.
‘We’ve all got that nasty little streak inside us, that secret desire to just silence the person saying what we don’t want to hear. And that nasty streak embraces force because when force is on your side, reason, logic and morality don’t have to be. You’re talking about fighting fire with fire. Well, who here hasn’t fantasised about putting a bullet in the head of some scumbag the world could do without: Bin Laden, Le Pen, Nick Griffin?’
[...]
‘You tell yourself the world would be a better place without them, but would it? Sure, the world wouldn’t miss another bloodthirsty extremist or racist hate monger, but the moment they were gone, the world would then be a place where we kill people because we don’t like what they’re thinking.’
Are we there yet? The number of journalists and environmental activists who get disappeared each year would argue in favour.
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One of the best episodes in the series, that can be read as a stand-alone.
I also recommend a more recent novel by the same author, set in the film world [“The Cut”]