It is 25 years since multi-award-winning Sunday Times bestseller Chris Brookmyre’s first book was published. Since then, he has established himself as one of the most popular crime writers in the UK. His enthusiasm for hurling himself into extra-curricular activities such as the Scotland v England Writers football, the Caledonian Challenge, Channel 5 Egg Heads, the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers (including appearances at Glastonbury and in Toronto), BBC Question Time and a live celebrity Mastermind with Clive Myrie (specialist subject Buffy the Vampire Slayer) is well known and means he has more to talk about than most.
Chris’ first book, Quite Ugly One Morning, was published in 1996 and later adapted for an ITV drama starring James Nesbitt and Eddie Marsan. He’s written twenty-eight novels since, four with his wife Marisa Haetzman under their pen name Ambrose Parry (Marisa visited Islay Book Festival last year to talk about their latest historical crime novel, Voices of the Dead).
Chris told us “this will be my second trip to Islay, having appeared at the festival back in 2016, when the audience greatly enjoyed correcting all the things I had got wrong in my partially Islay-set novel Dead Girl Walking. On this trip, I am particularly looking forward to hearing Andrew O’Hagan talk about Caledonian Road, and as a huge fan of Parks and Recreation, I quite fancy recreating Ron Swanson’s pilgrimage to the Lagavulin distillery.”
Hope you take your whisky neat, Chris.
You can find out more about Chris at his website.
Chris’s latest book The Cracked Mirror came out just a couple of weeks ago, so we’re some of the first to hear him talking about it!
Chris will join Denise Mina for a brilliantly unpredictable Friday night event at Islay Book Festival – get your tickets here.