All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye

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Format:	Paperback 416 pages

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Synopsis

As a teenager Jane Bell had dreamt of playing in the casinos of Monte Carlo in the company of James Bond, but in her punk phase she'd got herself pregnant and by the time she reaches forty-six she's a grandmother, her dreams as dry as the dust her Dyson sucks up from her hall carpet every day. Then her son Ross, a researcher working for an arms manufacturer in Switzerland, is forced to disappear before some characters cut from the same cloth as Blofeld persuade him to part with the secrets of his research. But they are not the only ones desperate to locate him. A team of security experts is hired by Ross's firm: headed by the enigmatic Bett, his staff have little in common apart from total professionalism and a thorough disregard for the law. Bett believes the key to Ross's whereabouts is his mother, and in one respect he is right, but even he is taken aback by the verve underlying her determination to secure her son's safety as she learns the black arts of quiet subterfuge and violent attack. The teenage dreams of fast cars, high-tech firepower and extreme action had always promised to be fun and games, but in real life it's likely someone is going to lose an eye ...Visit the author's website at www. brookmyre.co.uk

Book details

Published
20/04/2006

Publisher
Abacus

ISBN
9780349117454

Publisher and industry reviews

Jacket review

'A sharp, memorable and occasionally surprisingly touching book.' Euan Ferguson, Observer 'Funny, electric and captivating.' Marcel Berlins, THE TIMES 'Memorably funny lines.' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'The usual rip-roaring narrative but with a vividly adult, sensitive edge.' GLASGOW HERALD 'Exotic locations, fast-moving storyline, snappy dialogue, a raunchy grandmother, espionage, violence, humour and a mad scientist- Brookmyre certainly knows how to pack a crime novel... definitely in a league of his own.' DAILY MIRROR 'As ever, Brookmyre can do madcap escapism which cocks a snook at the cliches of your average thriller while never letting up on the adrenaline, completely sucking you into the world of his devious imagination.' DAILY EXPRESS 'Very funny.' HEAT 'All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses An Eye belongs to the half of Brookmyre's work less concerned with the state of the Scottish nation and more with what happens when iconically ordinary Scots are dumped into the middle of Hollywood plots. Here, we have, on the one hand, an international trouble-shooting organization most of whose agents are on the run from some sort of trouble themselves, and, on the other, a forty-something grandmother aware that life has passed her by and was not meant to. When someone tries to kidnap her grand-daughter, she responds with inventive viciousness; told to save her family by making a South of France rendezvous, she steals passports, cars and tickets as if she has always been doing it. Recruited merely as an expert on a missing boffin who happens to be her son, Jane demonstrates that the quiet desperation of ordinary life is the best training a super agent could have...This is Brookmyre at his most slyly subversive and viscerally exciting, a daydream which never quite becomes preposterous.' Roz Kaveney, AMAZON.CO.UK REVIEW

About the author

Christopher Brookmyre

Chris Brookmyre was a journalist before becoming a full time novelist with the publication of QUITE UGLY ONE MORNING. Since the publication of A BIG BOY DID IT AND RAN AWAY he and his family decided to move away from Aberdeen and now live near Glasgow. Oh, yes.