Christopher Brookmyre Books in Order

Cosy village sleuth Penny Coyne and hard-boiled LAPD detective Johnny Hawke belong in completely different crime stories, until a dead writer and a mysterious wedding invitation force their worlds together. As they probe the case, the line between fiction and reality starts to warp in unsettling ways.

Jen invites a select group of women to a luxury island retreat to celebrate her second marriage, hoping a weekend away will heal old rifts. When their private chef is found dead and messages from 'The Reaper' begin arriving, the guests discover that someone has come for reckoning, not relaxation.

Once a sought-after special-effects artist, Millicent Spark is an ageing ex-con who served decades for a murder on a supposedly cursed horror film. Teaming up with film student Jerry, she hits the road across Europe to confront old collaborators and finally learn what really happened on that shoot.

In this chilling short piece, well-meaning parents slowly realise their clever, difficult child has done something unspeakable. As guilt and denial war with fear, the story edges toward a reckoning that raises uncomfortable questions about love, responsibility and vengeance.

New nanny Amanda arrives at a Portuguese holiday villa to work for the glamorous Temple family, still haunted by the unsolved death of toddler Niamh there sixteen years earlier. As old tensions resurface during a reunion, Amanda realises everyone has a version of the truth, and some are willing to lie to protect it.

Nineteen-year-old hacker Sam Morpeth is caring for her younger sister while their mother is in prison, hiding her alter ego Buzzkill behind a meek real-world persona. When an anonymous blackmailer demands she steal a tech prototype, she strong-arms Jack Parlabane into a dangerous act of digital and physical burglary.

Superintendent Catherine McLeod expects a quiet bank-holiday outing when she visits a historic castle outside Glasgow. Instead she is called into a live hostage situation involving tourists, teenagers and a truckload of explosives, where one bad decision could turn a day trip into a disaster.

On Ciudad de Cielo, a vast space station built to launch humanity into the stars, corruption is an everyday fact of life. After a body is found literally in pieces, cynical fixer Nikki 'Fix' Freeman and idealistic administrator Alice Blake investigate, uncovering gang wars, mind-altering tech and buried secrets.

Neurosurgeon and outspoken blogger Diana Jager rebuilds her life after an online hate campaign, falling quickly for charming IT expert Peter. When he drives off a bridge and his body is never found, Jack Parlabane is hired to decide whether Diana is grieving widow or calculating killer.

Disgraced and newly divorced, Jack Parlabane takes a paying job tracking down Heike Gunn, the mercurial singer of cult band Savage Earth Heart who has disappeared mid-tour. His hunt across Europe intertwines with the diary of new fiddle player Monica, revealing the corrosive pressures behind the band’s success.

In snowbound London just before Christmas, civil servant Kendra spots proof that her boss is involved in a national-security scandal and decides to leak it. Jack Parlabane, desperate for a career-saving scoop, jumps at the story only to discover that exposing the truth could cost them both.

Private investigator Jasmine Sharp finds herself protecting Glen Fallan, the fearsome enforcer who killed her father, when he is accused of murdering a Glasgow gangster. Catherine McLeod sees ritual markings at the crime scene that drag up her own history, tying both women to a long-running feud.

Scientist Ross Baker agrees to test new scanning tech at his employer and wakes to find himself inside a violent, retro video-game world. Trapped in a patchwork of familiar shooters and fantasy realms, he must work out who put him there and why before his real body is lost.

Jasmine Sharp is hired to trace a woman who vanished from the Scottish theatre scene in the early 1980s, a job that leads to rumours of a debauched Highlands house party. Meanwhile Catherine McLeod investigates a sniper killing at a castle performance, and their paths inevitably cross.

This collection gathers several of Brookmyre’s shorter, nastier tales, including a Jack Parlabane undercover piece about dubious alternative medicine. Expect body-snatchers, botched revenge and a hitman struggling with family life, all delivered with his trademark mix of gallows humour and moral unease.

In Glasgow, Detective Superintendent Catherine McLeod knows a drug-dealer’s execution is the opening move in a turf war, not just another statistic. At the same time failed actress Jasmine Sharp is learning the PI trade and searching for her missing uncle, until both cases converge violently.

Teenagers from a Catholic school are ferried to a remote Highland centre for a therapeutic retreat after a classmate’s murder, expecting counselling and mild mischief. Nearby, a secret military experiment has opened a doorway to something that looks like Hell, and the two worlds collide.

Years after clashing with terrorist Simon Darcourt, Angelique de Xavia is hunting him again as he kidnaps celebrities and streams their torment to a fascinated public. With her own family under threat, she turns to magician-thief Zal Innez for one last high-wire plan.

Jack Parlabane appears to be dead, yet somehow he is still narrating the story of a flamboyant psychic submitting to scientific tests in Glasgow. As sceptics and believers wage war over the results, Jack digs into a con that seems to bend reality itself.

When two burned bodies are found in a car near Glasgow, Detective Karen Gillespie realises the suspects are boys she grew up with. The investigation jumps between present-day interviews and brutally funny schoolyard memories to show how ordinary kids become dangerous adults.

Jane Fleming is a forty-something grandmother whose life revolves around cleaning, cooking and worrying. When her son’s work for an arms company puts him in the crosshairs of ruthless criminals, Jane teams up with a covert security outfit and discovers unexpected talents for mayhem.

A motley crowd of executives, charity bosses and one sceptical journalist are flown to a remote Highland hotel for an expensive team-building weekend. When power, communications and transport are cut, Jack Parlabane realises the games have turned into a planned massacre.

A surreal Glasgow bank robbery turns into a strange kind of courtship when martial-arts-trained cop Angelique de Xavia is taken hostage by charismatic thief Zal Innez. As the heist spirals outward, she has to decide whether to trust her instincts or the institutions she serves.

Raymond Ash is a bored teacher and new father who thinks his wild youth is long gone, until he spots an old friend believed dead in a terrorist attack. That sighting pulls him, and counter-terror cop Angelique de Xavia, into a deadly plot against Scotland.

Jack Parlabane’s habit of breaking into places finally lands him in prison just as a new Scottish parliament and a resurgent church are locked in a dirty power struggle. From behind bars he uncovers a scandal that could topple leaders and get him killed.

Gavin Hutchinson lures his old school class onto a converted North Sea oil rig for the ultimate high-school reunion and business pitch. When a gang of heavily armed mercenaries choose the same night for a kidnap job, the guests are forced to fight back.

In Los Angeles, weary cop Larry Freeman is assigned to babysit a schlocky B-movie festival, the kind of duty meant to ease him back after tragedy. As protests, right-wing fanatics and a missing research ship collide, he stumbles into an apocalypse-flavoured conspiracy.

When a hated tabloid tycoon and his wife are slaughtered in their Scottish mansion, four small-time crooks are arrested before anyone asks why the case feels too neat. Jack Parlabane and a determined young lawyer start picking at the political cover-up.

Disgraced reporter Jack Parlabane moves into an Edinburgh tenement and promptly discovers a spectacularly gruesome murder in the flat downstairs. His curiosity drags him into a battle with hitmen, hospital managers and politicians who would rather keep a deadly scandal buried.