His bloody project Documents relating to the case of Roderick Macrae : a historical thriller

IT'S ONLY A STORY - or is it? Graeme Macrae Burnet makes such masterly use of the narrative form that the horrifying tale he tells in HIS BLOODY PROJECT (Skyhorse, $24.99), a finalist for this year's Man Booker Prize, seems plucked straight out of Scotland's sanguinary historical archives. Presented as a collection of "Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae," which took place in 1869, the novel includes the jailhouse memoir of a 17-year-old Scottish Highlander being held in Inverness Castle, awaiting trial for three appalling murders. Roderick and his family brave feudal conditions, toiling as tenant farmers on a small allotment, harvesting peat for fuel and scavenging seaweed to fertilize their gardens. It's a hard existence, made even harder by Lachlan Mackenzie, a vindictive constable who systematically strips the Macraes of their livelihood. When father and son bravely take their grievances to the factor, the man charged with running the estate on behalf of the laird, he cruelly dismisses their request to see the regulations they're accused of violating. "The reason you may not ?see' the regulations is because there are no regulations," he informs them. "You might as well ask to see the air we breathe." After being goaded beyond endurance, Roderick seeks out his tormentor while carrying a croman (a pickax) and a flaughter (a pointed spade), "merely to discover what would happen if I paid a visit to his house thus armed." At moments like this, we begin to suspect that Roderick isn't the most trustworthy of narrators. For a "semiliterate peasant," he has recorded a testament so "sustained and eloquent" that the Edinburgh literati suspect a hoax. Not so Roderick's lawyer, Andrew Sinclair, who marvels at the prisoner's graceful writing and command of language even as he's sickened by the conditions under which people like the Macraes must toil. But the lawyer's defense may not be enough to counter the contemptuous testimony of men like the bigoted prison surgeon, J. Bruce Thomson, who contributes his own sour observations to the medical reports and witness statements presented in court. Thomson's examination of the prisoner confirms his view that criminal behavior is determined by heredity. In Macrae's case, though, what might be inherited is sheer desperation. INTRODUCING HIS first novel, IQ (Mulholland/Little, Brown, $26), Joe Ide recalls his youth as a Japanese resident of an African-American neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles. Living between cultures (and, no doubt, for self-preservation), he adopted the "speech, style and attitude" of his neighbors, while surviving by the formidable intellect he fancies he shares with his hero, Sherlock Holmes. That description also applies to Isaiah (IQ) Quintabe, Ide's "unlicensed and undaground" - and wonderfully quirky - detective. The jobs people bring to Isaiah are extremely modest, as are the payments for his services. (He's said to have put one case to bed for some store-bought blueberry muffins.) So the chance to make serious money by smoking out the hit man who has taken aim at a rapper named Black the Knife comes at an opportune time. Other musicians have no respect for Isaiah's new client - "He could spit some but his beats were reruns and his rhymes were tired tired tired," according to a singer called Blasé - which makes this wacky investigation even more challenging. If not for a creepy killer cruising the scene ("Hellooo, Carmela"), the exhilarating language and oddball cast would make this debut a total laff-riot. WITH TANA FRENCH'S characterdriven mysteries, the reader always gets a double feature. In THE TRESPASSER (Viking, $27), one pivotal player is Aislinn Murray, who's dead when the story opens - dressed to the nines, with the back of her head smashed in from an assisted fall to the fireplace hearth. "She looks like Dead Barbie," French tells us. Aislinn's counterpart is the novel's narrator, Antoinette Conway, a prickly officer on the Dublin Murder Squad, who becomes personally caught up in the case. Although French, a fine writer, can be downright eloquent when she wants to, here she uses an abrasive voice to capture this working-class cop's truculent attitude toward the colleagues making her life a misery. Conway's inelegant grammar can grate on the ear, but it won't keep you from enjoying the view as she takes her revenge. "CAN WE PUBLISH a cookbook when the chef who wrote it has been stabbed to death with a butcher's knife?" That question is enough to tell US NO ECHO (Scribner, $26) isn't set in New York, where such a prospect would make most publishers giddy with joy. Of course, Anne Holt's police procedural takes place in her native Norway, and her simpatico detective, Hanne Wilhelmsen, would never be so heartless - especially after she's just spent six months at a monastic retreat mourning the death of her longtime partner. In this polished translation by Anne Bruce, Wilhelmsen quickly puts on her game face when a fellow officer is unable to solve the murder of the celebrity chef whose body has been found at the back door of the Oslo police station. Although Holt isn't a playful writer, her observations on the restaurant business can be downright droll.

Burnet's fascinating second novel (after The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau), which has been shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, purports to be an account of the celebrated case of Roderick Macrae, a 17-year-old crofter who was indicted for three brutal murders carried out in his native village of Culduie in the Scottish Highlands in 1869. The documents mentioned in the subtitle include statements from his neighbors; an account written by Roderick while awaiting trial; extracts from the delightfully titled Travels in the Border-Lands of Lunacy by J. Bruce Thomson, "a man of science" in the field of criminal anthropology; and coverage of the trial gleaned from newspaper accounts and transcripts. The Rashomon-like shifting of perspectives adds depth to the characters and gives readers the pleasure of repeatedly reinterpreting events. Although Burnet paints a disturbing picture of the hopelessness and hardships of tenant farmers, as well as providing an eye-opening introduction to the fallibility of so-called expert witnesses, this is not a bleak book. Rather, it is sly, poignant, gritty, thought-provoking, and sprinkled with wit. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.