The Bone Yard

Quint Dalrymple #2

by Paul Johnston

The Bone Yard is a dystopian thriller set in Edinburgh during the harsh winter of 2021. Rogue detective Quintilian Dalrymple, a former bureaucrat who left his high-ranking job to work for the parks service and solve mysteries on the side, sets about catching a serial killer with a peculiar signature. The killer bites out the victim's throat, cuts out the tongue, removes the genitals, and leaves in the cavity a cassette of the electric blues of Clapton, Hendrix, and others. In the allegedly crime-free Edinburgh city-state (which is expressly modeled on Plato's Republic, but in practice resembles every cliché of pre-1990 Eastern Bloc regimes), blues music is contraband. So are casual sex, monogamy, fattening foods, all drugs, and more-than-weekly showers. So why does the killer leave cryptic messages via electric blues?

Johnston won Britain's John Creasey Award for best first crime novel with 1999's Body Politic, and in The Bone Yard he possibly takes for granted that his readers already know and care about Dalrymple and his cohorts. Character development is scanty, so the playful rivalry between Dalrymple and sidekick Davie, for example, is mostly conveyed through edginess and four-letter words. Their terseness is juxtaposed against the obfuscatory language of the council, the "iron Boy Scouts" who gradually become implicated in the four grisly murders and a related scheme. The serial murderer's infelicitous musical clues lead Dalrymple to discover a dangerous drug remarkably like Viagra, which is being manufactured illegally within the Edinburgh city-state. Dalrymple travels to a zoo, a slaughterhouse, and a foul fishing boat to find the lab, which may be tied to the mysterious "Bone Yard" that the council shrouds in top-level security and secrecy. In addition, a nubile exotic dancer meets an untimely end, leading the two detectives and Dalrymple's tough ex-girlfriend Katharine to the Three Graces sex club, which caters to Edinburgh's rich and burgeoning tourist population. Readers trolling for mysteries set in exciting locales may thus be gratified by The Bone Yard, which is a blend of 1984 (though with inferior prose), The China Syndrome, and Showgirls. The plot moves briskly through dark terrain, both physically and philosophically. It's got a relentlessly downbeat tenor, but Johnston intricately ties together the threads of the four murder victims and their psychopathic killer, and the secret of the Bone Yard. --Kathi Inman Berens

Genres: Fiction, Crime, Science Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Futuristic

297 pages, Hardcover

First published April 15, 1999

About the author

Paul Johnston was born in Edinburgh, studied Greek at Oxford, and now divides his time between the UK and a small Greek island. His highly-acclaimed Quintilian Dalrymple series won the John Creasey Memorial Dagger for best first crime novel.

Series:
* Quint Dalrymple
* Alex Mavros
* Matt Wells

Reviews

[Karl]

This hardcover edition is signed by Paul Johnston.

[Ian Laird · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not that good. A sub-Huxley construct has Edinburgh of the near future a stratified society, with guardians, auxiliaries, citizens, guardsmen, outlaws and deserters, run by the Council of Guardians, after civilianisation, as we would know it, has been destroyed by drugs, the proliferation of nuclear power and the cult of the individual.

Blues enthusiast (in itself now illegal) Quintilian Dalrymple, investigates a series of grisly murders featuring cassettes with meaningful blues tracks inserted into the bodies. He is also searching for The Bone Yard and suspects complicity at the top. Well, the blues idea is forced, the characters uneven at best and the new Edinburgh society is never satisfactorily realised, but alluded to with awkward references and imagery rather than evoked with description and dialogue:

‘We went up grimy stairs to a room furnished with a table and chairs that wouldn’t have found space in junk shops in the old days.’ (p220)

‘The chief toxicologists thick lips gave a brief and surprisingly delicate twitch, like an actor greeting a colleague across a crowded room in the days before that profession became superfluous to modern society’s needs. (p108)

There is also an unimaginative reliance on the one bridge to indicate how much worse off life has become, viz:

‘…a pick-up truck with more rust than is on what is left of the Forth Rail Bridge…’ (p232) and ‘[He] was more off the rails than the last train that tried to cross the Forth Rail Bridge after independence.’ (p253)

The action picked up towards the end but not enough to save the whole story.

[Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting followup. Similar to the prequel; the sexual and other violence levels remain high. I felt like there were moments when the author was trying too hard to sprinkle the narrative with zing-y quips. I haven't decided yet if I want to read the next one. (My library has #3 and #5 but not #4 ... so this makes me slightly hesitant.)

[Emalene · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book started off very slow, and you can definitely tell by the narrator's voice that the author is a dude. However, things did pick up when Katharine was introduced - you can always count on a woman to liven things up. After her arrival on the scene, the action picked up and I couldn't put it down. I give it three stars for a slow beginning and the distinctively manly narration.

[David Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

A tad technical as a plot line - moving swiftly from the initial set up to something that could never be considered a whodunnit - but an easy enough read in a series that I started years ago but am rereading (partly as they are set in a post independence Edinburgh) and partly because he has released new volumes in recent times

[Matthew McClintock · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable, but not well-written. Dystopian detective fiction is handled more interestingly in "The Last Policeman."

[Patricia Urban · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Quintilian Dalrymple series is fun--but I love Edinburgh, so that's a major factor

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Paul Johnston's the Bone Yard, the second installment in the Quint Darlymple dystopian thriller series, this would present a bleak look at the future. In winter 2021 in Edinburgh, Scotland, Quint Darlymple was an ordinary solved mysteries on the side. It's past the Enlightenment Period when Guardsman and Auxillaries rule the various governmental fields and ordinary people like Quint are known as Citizens. It all started when an old friend of his, Roddie Aitken, asked him to find out what's really going on in the Bone Yard, and who were the masked killer was. And when Roddie wound up dead, it was nothing but personal to find out what happened to him and to report everything he knew to the Top Council. Since he wasn't a Guardsman, he had help from Davie, a fellow Guardsman, when they discovered something stuck in Roddie's mouth from his decapitated body: a tape of the "Electric Blues" from a long gone period. Quint didn't know what message that would be. As he went to find out more about what events led to Roddie's death, he kept asked what's so secret about the Bone Yard, when no one dared to speak of it. Later on, more dead bodies ended up the same way when Quint's ex Katherine Kirkwood returned on the scene to help him with the drug connection. As he kept knocking on doors to look for answers, he didn't expect that it would lead back to the senior boyscout and the truth behind what was the Bone Yard, and the last person he would expect to face on would be someone fro his past to make lethal ends meet.

[Shauna Pollard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Johnston loves the tropes of the crime genre and uses them, perhaps excessively. That said, his storyline is engaging and characters interesting. His use of C20th dystopian references sit well in this future world where authoritarian rule has led to deprivation and a society defined by roles and rules able to be manipulated.
An enjoyable read.

[good1102]

Good Volk

[Stefania Schiavi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked it, but it was a little too slow and a bit more boring than the other books of the series.

Anyway, I think the idea of this dystopian Edinburgh remains a great one!

[Rog Harrison · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think someone gave me this book as a present.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in August 2001.

The bleak world of the Edinburgh of the future under a regime supposedly based on the ideas of Plato's Republic has already been explored through the eyes of maverick blues fanatic and private investigator Quintilian Dalrymple in Body Politic. The Bone Yard, set a couple of years later, is the story of another of his investigations, into the horrific murder and mutilation of a young man who had asked for protection. This quickly leads to the realisation that there are serious problems at a senior level in the regime, as it looks like someone is conniving at the development of a new and dangerous drug, set to sweep the city.

It takes some time for The Bone Yard to grip the reader, but its bleak story and background - Ian Rankin meets George Orwell - eventually do, and then don't let go. While not particularly original either as mystery or science fiction, it leaves the feeling that it is an impressive novel.

It is interesting that Johnston's vision of a fragmented Britain of the near future is very similar to that of his fellow Scot, Ken MacLeod. Maybe the idea has been inspired by Scottish devolution!

[Rich B · Rating 4 out of 5]

More murder investigations from Quintilian Dalrymple in this alternative reality version of Edinburgh (interestingly, well in the future when written, now a few years in the past).

An enthusiastic young delivery driver turns up at Quint’s door, claiming he’s being followed by a mysterious hooded figure. Quint promises to help, but when he goes to visit him a day or two later, he finds him brutally murdered and mutilated, with a grisly clue left behind.

So sets off his investigation into why, which takes him into the murky past of Torness, the city’s now-defunct nuclear power station and of course, the ongoing politics of the city's ruling Guardians.

It’s a good read, and I enjoyed the scene setting and characters, although plot-wise, it starts well but gets a bit messy towards the end (dropping in the villain right at the end and an also unsurprising second villain).

Overall, I liked rather than loved it, a benefit of the doubt score because I like the premise behind it and the main characters.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is one in a series set in Edinburgh, Scotland in the 2020's after the world economy has collapsed into scattered city-states due to wars and drugs. Edinburgh is tightly run by the Guardians with the support of auxiliaries, who are referred to by their numbers rather than their names. The Guardians proclaim the city crime-free, but then hire Quint (Quintilian) Dalrymple to solve the crimes that occur. Quint is supported by a great group of friends and acquaintances who are interesting and well fleshed out. The series is amusing and entertaining. The second book has Quint trying to solve a case where people are murdered and tapes are left in their bodies. A big clue is the Boneyard, and Quint and Davie have to find out what the Boneyard is, and how it is linked to the murders.

[Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the second book in a series of five. Paul Johnston calls it the quint of Quintillian Dalrymple (I like that conceit). The city state of Edinburgh & its guardians is besieged. A series of murders to be solved with clues of blues on tape. QD battles to find out what is the bone yard, solve the murders & fight the guardians. I thought th idea of 21st Century Edinburgh was intriguing and well thought out but the ending of the book was a littl weak. Maybe I should have started with the first book of the series (must go and search it out).

[Virginia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I usually like dystopian fiction; however, I'm still not sure what I really think of this one. The author's constant attempts at "edgy" over-worked similes became exceedingly tedious after the first page. I guess they were intended to parody the cynical tone of hard boiled detective fiction but they were just tiresome. There were some unnecessarily lurid descriptions but the plot and setting had potential.

[Melinda · Rating 1 out of 5]

Way too many cliches, distended dialog and story, weak ending, felt like walking in bogs/swamp and your feet constantly getting stuck. Interesting glimpse of future, seen through Quint just boring.

[Andrée · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some great ideas but poorly executed and the laboured similies stopped me wading through to the end

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Horrible future ... Interesting character's tho!