The Cliff House: One hen weekend, seven secrets… but only one worth killing for

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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. 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. 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?

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: It’s like a toy box and you are going to let them root through it and you are not going to have some new character arrive three quarters of the way in.”Thank you to Chris Brookmyre and Scarlet Suspense for my complimentary copy. All opinions are my own. As we talk on the phone, he is preparing for an event in Edinburgh with his appearance at Conversations on the Coast coming up next week. There will be others that’ll lap this one up but I was frankly glad to survive it and battle my way through to the end. There are some clever twists and interesting moments but overall I’m afraid it didn’t really work for me: just too complicated, too contrived and way too unlikely. 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. 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.

As a writer I do plot things out quite carefully but you always need room to allow the characters to breathe – it’s always a kind a balancing act. East Neuk Literary Festival The chapters alternate between the viewpoints of each of the protagonists and, when they split up in search of the kidnapped woman, each begins to wonder if they’ve been paired with the intended target, but, at the same time, guiltily accepting the target could be them. He read adult fiction and devoured Tolkien, Douglas Adams and Ian Fleming’s books– “young adult fiction hadn’t been invented yet,” he points out. 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. 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.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.