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Flesh House

Author: Stuart Macbride
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Category: Book

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Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

25 reviews
Sales Rank: 94

Media: Hardcover
Pages: 480
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.7

ISBN: 0007244541
EAN: 9780007244546
ASIN: 0007244541

Publication Date: May 6, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days

Also Available In:

•	Hardcover - Flesh House (Logan McRae)
•	Paperback - Flesh House

Similar Items:

•	Broken Skin
•	Dying Light
•	Cold Granite
•	Dead Man's Footsteps
•	Fractured

Editorial Reviews:

Amazon.co.uk Review
Those who like their crime thrillers diamond hard (but shot through with macabre humour) need look no further than Stuart MacBride. As Flesh House, his latest, once again proves, he has few equals in this area, and is more than worthy of the ever-growing legion of admirers he is gleaning. His tough protagonist, Logan McRae, is once again negotiating the mean streets of Aberdeen, with violence and threat forever at his elbow. Those who have read Cold Granite, Dying Light and Broken Skin will know what to expect here -- and they'll be aware that they're not in for a comfortable ride.

The city is in a state of fear. Some 20 years ago, the Grampian police nailed a particularly vicious serial killer known as The Flesher, a monster who had claimed victims throughout the country. But one of those frequent legal appeals which so often release dangerous criminals into the community has freed him, and when a container with human body parts appears at Aberdeen harbour, it looks like the stage is once again set for carnage on a massive scale. DS Logan McRae (along with his less experienced colleague, Chief Constable Mark Faulds from Birmingham -- who was on the original team tracking down The Flesher), finds himself in charge of one of the most ambitious manhunts city has ever seen. And then members of the original team tracking down their serial killer prey (whose real name is Ken Wiseman) begin to disappear -- and more human meat is making grisly appearances. All of this is delivered with the requisite grasp of tension and characterisation that we have come to expect from Stuart MacBride. There are those who will feel he has gone too far in Flesh House in confronting the less savoury aspects of human behaviour, but fans of uncompromising crime writing will be in their element. --Barry Forshaw

Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...

2 out of 5 stars

Carry On Up the Truncheon July 15, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

What annoys me most about Flesh House isn't so much what's inside its pages, but what's written on the front and back covers. Let's start with Mark Billingham (a personal friend of the author if memory serves), who declares : "Fierce, unflinching crime fiction of the highest order". Sorry, but none of that is true, frankly. A more accurate appraisal might have been "Feeble, uninteresting crime fiction of the lowest order." On the back Val Mcdermid calls it "Ferocious and funny" - well, some of the imagery is pretty grim and unpleasant but the relentless attempts at comedy - and I'm talking about on almost every single page and which rarely raise a smile anyway - totally undermine any dark atmosphere the author was trying to create. Reginald Hill opines "If you're looking for taut narrative, gut-churning incident, strong characterisation, all shot through with savagely dark humour, then look no further." Well, Hill's observations are pure fiction in themselves, unless he had said "look elsewhere" for such objectives.

Let me explain why I say these things. The narrative is not taut, it is amongst the worst I have seen, and one of the reasons for this is MacBrides's continued obsession with mixing the narrative style with the dialogue style such that all the expletives spoken by the characters appear just as frequently in the narrative. That's amateurish, annoying and arduous for those of us like myself who have put up with this 'method' for four consecutive novels. I shouldn't really even mention the word 'prose' here, because there simply isn't any. It's just words. Nothing poetic, nothing beautiful and nothing to admire. Just as grudging a complaint on my part is the mention of 'strong characterisation', which as a description is funnier than any of MacBride's attempts at comedy after four whole novels.

We have, for want of a better word, a central character in the form of DS Logan McRae; really all he represents is the story's moral conscience, the one without personality or comedic parody and consequently the most uninteresting person in the tale. Flesh House reads like a debut novel, but then so did all of its predecessors - there is categorically NO character development at all, as everybody looks, sounds and smells exactly the same as they always did. While it's true a few dramatic events fall the way of DI Insch, I am utterly sick and tired of the references to his physical size; if this book represented his introduction to the series it would have been bad enough (the words big', 'huge' and 'fat' must collectively appear well over one hundred times) but for the many who already knew of his dimensions, it's very wearisome.

Savagely dark humour? Try this extract and see if you agree:-
"She wasn't kidding about Insch's mood - by the time Logan bumped into the inspector, he looked as if someone had stuffed a hand grenade up his bum and pulled the pin. The explosion was imminent. Fire in the hole."
Er - this is not savage, nor is it dark, and come to think of it, it's not funny either. I get the impression that MacBride likes humour best of all, and is trying (very successfully, it must be said) to sell a comedy story in the crime fiction genre. The only line in the whole book that raised a smile for me - because it was subtle, for once - was on P.401 of the hardback when Logan is having a conversation over a cup of tea with the pathologist Doc Fraser. Immediately after Doc Fraser gruesomely describes the means of death (which involved decapitation), Logan calmly replies, "Here you go. Milk, two sugars." A very rare example of what might be regarded as clever humour, but all of the rest throughout the tale is straight from the stage of a corny pantomime or a Carry-On film. The 'horrors' are plentiful but these are totally undermined by MacBride's insistence on trying to be funny, and vice versa.

The only saving grace is that Flesh House is a little better than the one before - Broken Skin - which was a complete shambles. The irony is that I have a feeling that MacBride could do much better than this if he wanted to, but has cleverly assessed the demand from the biggest audience in order to maximise sales. That's writing for money rather than out of passion, but also a sad reflection of the demands and standards of the contemporary British crime-fiction reader who if only they knew, could find much fiercer and more unflinching crime fiction elsewhere (try the first two of Mo Hayder's Jack Caffery series for example), funnier and better-used humour from John Connolly, immeasurably finer prose from R J Ellory and stronger characterisation from Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin or Val McDermid among many others. Flesh House is popcorn crime fiction for the text-message loving populace and little more. There is so much better quality to be found outside of and beyond these pages.

4 out of 5 stars

cracking crime story, gory but with humour. July 14, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

Again another excellent crime story, keeps you guessing and is hard to put down.Good humour throughout, but why did it take until page 326 for McBride to get the spelling of trichloroethylene correct??

1 out of 5 stars

Flesh House July 7, 2008
1 out of 5 found this review helpful

I have read all of Stuart MacBride's other books and enjoyed them. However, when I read a British Crime novel, I really don't want to be confronted by the gruesome pages I found in Flesh House. I have to confess not to have finished it, and finding something else "quieter" to read to take my mind from it.

Not at all what I expected.

5 out of 5 stars

Stunning!! July 2, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

This was a real can't put down page turner. Paul Johnston's Quint Dalrymple, Jack Kerley's Carson Ryder and John Connolly's Charlie Parker books are all fantastic but you can't help liking the down at heeel main character, Logan McRae, even though you don't really know what he looks like etc. With this book, even when you can see what's coming, it hits you harder than you expect.

The only thing I didn't like about this book is the final five pages. Not gonna spoil it for anyone. Can't wait for the next book from a cracking writer who, despite the intensity of the narrative, still finds time to make the reader laugh with a dark wit.

I awarded five stars because I was enthralled, despite the ending.

5 out of 5 stars

Bloody marvellous June 30, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

I am only half way through this book (having gleefully received a shiny new hardback copy from Amazon 2 days ago) and am loving every line of it. I have read all previous SM books and he is by far my favorite 'writer'. If it wasn't for being in full time employment I would have finished it by now - unputdownable. May Logan, Steel, Insch and Stuart Macbride long continue their production of fabulously gory and witty works! Hurrah!!!