Quite Ugly One Morning = ((NHS + money-grabbing politician) x (Parlabane + romance)) ^ Graphic violence

For a long time previously my other half had been reading Brookmyre and loving them. Loving them so much that he would stay up late into the night reading them because he just had to finish. My reaction to this would be to moan; "Turn out the light, I want to go to sleep!"

After much cajoling, I finally agreed to read a Brookmyre book. Being the anal kind of person that I am, I insisted on starting at the beginning.

Before I'd even finished the book I was apologising to my other half for ever moaning or rolling my eyes when he couldn't put a Brookmyre book down, or insisted on reading snippets out to me.

I was hooked by page three. It is a fantastic opening chapter, and still my second favourite Brookmyre chapter ever. Graphic violence galore, but damn if he doesn't make it funny. If you don't laugh out loud during that first chapter, then I truly believe you have no sense on humour.

The rest of the book made me laugh, and cringe, and pull faces and go "eww", and smile and go "aww", and laugh again. And more.

I will admit, I didn't like Parlabane at first. But like the mould in the on-call showers, he grew on me. Brookmyres characters are, if looked at rationally, kind of over-the-top and unrealistically caricatural, but that doesn't stop them being brilliantly done, and, in more subtle ways, they do have a lot of depth. I really really hated the evil characters, I really really loved the good characters and I really really laughed at the comic relief characters (McGregor, Skinner, I'm looking at you).

Basically, I would recommend this book to everyone.