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LONGLISTED for the MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2016. The year is 1869. A brutal triple murder in a remote community in the Scottish Highlands leads to the arrest of a young man by the name of Roderick Macrae. A memoir written by the accused makes it clear that he is guilty, but it falls to the country's finest legal and psychiatric minds to uncover what drove him to commit such merciless acts of violence. Was he mad? Only the persuasive powers of his advocate stand between Macrae and the gallows. Graeme Macrae Burnet tells an irresistible and original story about the provisional nature of truth, even when the facts seem clear. His Bloody Project is a mesmerising literary thriller set in an unforgiving landscape where the exercise of power is arbitrary.
About the author
Graeme Macrae Burnet is among the UK’s leading contemporary novelists, having achieved both critical acclaim and best-selling status around the world as a double Booker Prize nominee. His dazzling second novel,
His Bloody Project, was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2016, and in 2022 his 'brilliant, bamboozling' (
Telegraph) fourth novel,
Case Study, appeared on the Booker longlist. Born in Kilmarnock, he lives in Glasgow, where he studied film and English literature. After teaching English overseas and working as a researcher in the television industry, Graeme won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in 2013, and he now writes full-time. Graeme is also the author of two French-set novels inspired by Georges Simenon and featuring Gorski, a detective:
The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau (2014) and
The Accident on the A35 (2017), with a third Gorski novel set to appear soon. All his novels are published in the UK by independent press Saraband.
Summary
A brutal triple murder in a remote northwestern crofting community in 1869 leads to the arrest of a young man by the name of Roderick Macrae. There's no question that Macrae landed the savage blows, but what drove him to commit such merciless acts of violence. Was he insane? And will he swing for his wicked acts?
