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His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet – Book Review

January 1, 2021 January 6, 2021

One of my favourite reads of 2020 was a uniquely Scottish tale from Graeme Macrae Burnet, His Bloody Project , published by independent Scottish publisher Saraband .

Not only is this a dark, riveting novel set in the Scottish Highlands; shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2016; and a fascinating story.

The author also won Scottish Book Trust’s New Writers Award for his first book The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau in 2013!

Scottish Book Trust are a charity very near and dear to my heart, for various reasons; they do a lot of great work, gave me one of my first experiences of publication, and gave me the single nicest job rejection I’ve ever received.

But back to His Bloody Project .

The Man Booker shortlisted novel was one I’d seen around for years, and picked up and put down several times in second-hand shops. It was only a baffled review from one of my friends, who swore blind it was non-fiction, which really cinched it for me.

His Bloody Project is a fascinating piece of historical literary crime fiction. It’s also a really well done “why”dunnit.

Three people are murdered in a small Highland community and the accused murderer has written a deposition that says that he is unequivocally guilty.

But is that really the case?

The novel opens first with a preface from the “editor” of the piece, explaining the historical background of the memoir of seventeen-year-old Roderick Macrae, and the topology and nuance of relationships in the remote community the murder took place in almost excruciating historical detail.

There follows a series of eyewitness accounts of the events leading up to the murder, and of Roderick himself.

Roddy is, by all accounts, a quiet, odd character. Not necessarily one that all people expected to go on a murder spree.

In fact, he’s quite bright, for all his eccentricities. We also find out more about his strange, religious father

Mr Sinclair has asked that I set out what he calls he ‘chain of events’ which led to the killing of Lachlan Broad. His Bloody Project, p 25

We’re also introduced to Lachlan Mackenzie. He’s a character that the eyewitnesses seem to have very little sympathy for. He’s also very dead.

The account of Roddy himself is where things get interesting.

Whilst he does not shy away from the events of the murder – we are treated to a long lead-up to the eventual crime, getting to know the tensions in the small community of Culdie.

There is a long standing feud between Roderick’s father and the Mackenzies, and Roderick’s unrequited love for Flora Mackenzie is a lot less graceful than any sort of “Romeo and Juliet” scenario – though will have just as tragic an end.

Things are really kicked into overdrive when Lachlan Mackenzie is appointed factor. He seems determined to have the Macraes ousted from their croft.

But Roddy isn’t our only voice

After reading the account of Roderick, we get an account from a doctor, who specialises in “Lunacy”, who travels with Roderick’s lawyer to Culdie to interview the townsfolk more about the suspect’s mental state.

Finally, we get a full account of the very high-stakes trial, seemingly pieced together via contemporary newspaper reports.

To the uninitiated, like my friend, I could fully understand how you could get mixed up. Each different part of the novel is written superbly, and very realistically.

That might make you worried that there’s an element of “dry” or “confusing” to the narrative, but I don’t think so at all.

Each different “style” used in the novel reflects its author. You get a real taste of their own personal biases and motivations.

Surprisingly, the doctor’s report was probably my favourite, because he came off as snotty and obnoxious. It’s a distinct change from the memoir section it follows.

The historical detail and language really makes it

I love writing historical works myself, and I can testify as to the pain in the arse it can be to research. There’s a knack to getting it right; a balance of accuracy and enjoyability. This book felt richly detailed in the right way; it was very immersive. But it didn’t feel bogged down in minutiae either.

The other thing I love is the use of a little Scots . It’s peppered throughout the novel in my favourite way – without explanation. It’s peppered not only in dialogue but in the narrative. I love this.

It brings a tangible sense of location and era to the novel, a real nice touch. There’s a glossary in the back, which is helpful if you’re not familiar.

For some people, it might seem a little too much work to plough through. If you’re not that interested, you might not be tempted to give it a read.

But for me? The more I got into the wee details of the novel, the more I was excited to see how it’d all turn out.

It’s rather strange, as it’s not a high-octane thriller but it is very gripping. Surprisingly so.

The style of the novel really helps to build the idea that even the most cut-and-dried crime has an element of nuance; especially when each one of your narrators is as unreliable as these.

You see each angle of the case, and of Roddy Macrae.

You go back and forth between how you feel about the events as they unfold. It feels almost interactive, in a strange way!

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Dark undercurrents … a view from Culduie near Applecross, where His Bloody Project is set

His Bloody Project review by Graeme Macrae Burnet – murder in the Highlands

Based on ‘found’ documents, this Man Booker-longlisted historical thriller deftly masquerades as a slice of true crime

G raeme Macrae Burnet’s second novel from the crime imprint of the tiny Scottish publisher Saraband, a surprise inclusion on the Man Booker longlist , is a slippery creature indeed. It’s a psychological thriller masquerading as a slice of true crime; a collection of “found” documents that play lovingly with the traditions of Scottish literature; an artful portrait of a remote crofting community in the 19th century that showcases contemporary theories about class and criminology. The book is also a blackly funny investigation into madness and motivation, which perhaps leads no further than one character’s grim conclusion: “One man can no more see into the mind of another than he can see inside a stone.”

Subtitled “Documents relating to the case of Roderick Macrae”, His Bloody Project contains the 17-year-old crofter’s memoir, written while awaiting trial in Inverness in 1869 for three brutal murders, and “discovered” by the author while researching his own Highland roots. This manuscript, we are teasingly informed, divided the Edinburgh literati of the time, who feared a rerun of James Macpherson’s 18th-century literary hoax Ossian and considered it “quite inconceivable that a semi-literate peasant could produce such a sustained and eloquent piece of writing”. The apparently guileless account of how Roderick did indeed enter the house of his overbearing neighbour with croman , flaughter and murderous intent (a glossary is provided) is complicated by witness statements, medical reports and a journalistic account of the trial. It also includes a psychological report on Roderick by the real-life prison doctor James Bruce Thomson, who has firm opinions on the characteristics and proclivities of the “criminal class”.

Roderick confesses from the start his desire to rid the world of Lachlan Mackenzie, who as local constable is invested with power to keep the community in check, and uses it to make Roddy’s life even more of a misery than it already was. But is he insane to lash out, or only to admit to it? Was he always “wrong in the head”, as some of his neighbours maintain, or have grinding poverty and harsh treatment pushed a bright boy over the edge? Can new anthropological theories of “moral insanity” and “moral imbecility” explain his behaviour, or are they no different from the minister’s lofty condemnation of “the natural state of savagism” in which his peasant congregation dwells?

The descriptions of the crofting community, scratching a living from ungenerous soil, at the mercy of the laird, the church and the weather, are fascinatingly done. The strongest driver of the book’s momentum towards tragedy is a doomy stoicism that assigns every mishap to the mostly inauspicious workings of providence. “The outlook in these parts is that if one is to be visited by misfortune, there is nothing that can be done to avoid it.” There’s a healthy dose of Kafka as well as Flann O’Brien in Roderick’s account of laboriously gathering seaweed from the shoreline with his father to spread on the fields, then being forced by Lachlan to return it to the sea because they lack the laird’s permission to use his property. When they summon up the courage to seek clarification of the rules that govern their lives, they are told “that a person wishing to consult the regulations could only wish to do so in order to test the limits of the misdemeanours he might commit”. Stoicism and occasional outbursts of violence begin to look like the only possible responses to a world in which you have no power at all. From his jail cell, Roderick repeatedly comments on the absurdity of the fact that it is only murder that has made people treat him like a gentleman.

The book’s pretence at veracity, as well as being a literary jeux d’esprit , brings an extraordinary historical period into focus, while the multiple unreliable perspectives are designed to keep the audience wondering, throughout the novel and beyond. This is a fiendishly readable tale that richly deserves the wider attention the Booker has brought it.

Graeme Macrae Burnet

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His bloody project, by graeme macrae burnet.

Graeme Macrae Burnet’s brilliant, destabilising literary thriller uses (fictional) historical documents to construct a complex story of murder, corruption and unreliable narrators set in the 19th-century Scottish highlands. Long-listed for the Booker Prize.

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His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet review — crime and astonishment

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Barry Forshaw

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There is always a level of excitement around the Man Booker Prize shortlist — but this year there is an additional element of surprise. The buzz is not over “readable versus inaccessible” books; rather, it is over the fact that the list includes a crime novel. But is Graeme Macrae Burnet’s His Bloody Project actually a crime novel?

This is the second of Burnet’s books to be published by the small Scottish imprint Contraband; his first, a low-key detective story set in France, The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau (2014), enjoyed respectable reviews but no conspicuous success. In the new book, Burnet proves that the undeniable pleasures of the crime novel can be combined with real literary value and an experimental narrative structure.

His Bloody Project appears to channel a bookish version of the currently fashionable “found footage” film genre, in which verisimilitude is suggested by randomly cobbled-together documentary material forming a fragmentary narrative. In this case, Burnet includes witness statements, postmortem documents on murder victims, a documentary account of a trial — and a lengthy memoir by the man accused of triple murder. The subtitle of the book reads: “Documents relating to the case of Roderick Macrae”, and these ersatz papers build a picture of an insular Highland crofting community in the 19th century while also presenting a fascinating picture of attitudes to the criminology of the era.

The wholly fictitious premise is that the author, Burnet himself, while looking into his own Scottish roots, discovered a fragment of a memoir that apparently set Edinburgh society of the time alight. A young crofter, Roderick Macrae, wrote up the catastrophes of his life while awaiting trial in Inverness in 1869, accused of three savage killings. Macrae appears to have entered (with murderous intent) the house of his deeply unpleasant neighbour Lachlan Mackenzie, a local constable. But the truth of the events is pieced together via witness statements, postmortem reports, dodgy phrenologists and journalists setting down details of the trial.

The most revealing evidence is provided by the prison surgeon, James Bruce Thomson, who holds ironclad views on the behaviour of the criminal class. In Thomson’s eyes, Roderick is surely guilty, not least because of his admission that he had no love for the dead man who both ruled the community and made Macrae’s life a particular hell. His soul-baring at the trial brings forth condemnation from the pulpit as well as from the new discipline of psychological observation, which analyses character in more scientific — but no more helpful — terms. What, Burnet teasingly asks us, is truth?

Although he clearly draws on a Scottish literary tradition, there are other Celtic influences at work too: Joyce’s fragmentary assembly of narrative and that blackly comic strain characteristic of so many Irish writers. But this is not just a tricksy literary experiment — Burnet is a writer of great skill and authority. The central notion — a thuggish bully receiving bloody justice — is satisfyingly freighted with acute historical detail (the poor crofting community, the dead hand of the Scottish church crushing free spirits). What’s more, the hapless Roderick, writing from his jail cell, begins to grow in authority as a human being, realising that an accusation of murder is the existential fact that has made him a person of note — even if he may have to die for it.

To return to the initial question: is His Bloody Project a crime novel? The author has said that it might better be described as “a novel about a crime”, but readers won’t care about the definitions that still exercise those who worry whether or not Crime and Punishment is a proto-crime novel. Whatever the genre, few readers will be able to put down His Bloody Project as it speeds towards a surprising (and ultimately puzzling) conclusion.

His Bloody Project , by Graeme Macrae Burnet, Contraband, RRP£8.99, 288 pages

Barry Forshaw is the FT’s crime critic

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Book Review – His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet @SarabandBooks

About the book.

Book cover of His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet

The year is 1869. A brutal triple murder in a remote community in the Scottish Highlands leads to the arrest of a young man by the name of Roderick Macrae.

A memoir written by the accused makes it clear that he is guilty, but it falls to the country’s finest legal and psychiatric minds to uncover what drove him to commit such merciless acts of violence.

Was he mad? Only the persuasive powers of his advocate stand between Macrae and the gallows.

Format : Paperback (282 pages) Publisher : Saraband Publication date : 5th November 2015 Genre : Historical Fiction

Find His Bloody Project on Goodreads

Purchase His Bloody Project from Bookshop.org [Disclosure: If you buy books linked to our site, we may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops]

His Bloody Project was the book chosen for February’s Radio 4 Bookclub, although it had been on my wishlist ever since it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2016. I was fortunate enough to attend the recording of the programme at BBC Broadcasting House and listen to author, Graeme Macrae Burnet, talk about the book with its host, James Naughtie, and answer questions from the audience of fellow readers. If you’re in the UK, you can listen to the programme on BBC Sounds .

The book is made up of a series of documents including medical reports, witness statements and a court transcript. They give a remarkable feeling of authenticity, so much so that you could be forgiven for believing you’re reading about an actual crime, not a fictional one. It’s something that seems particularly relevant in an era of ‘fake news’. In fact, a few real historical figures appear in the book although, like me, you might well assume – until you read the Historical Notes – these are fictional too.

The central document, which constitutes the majority of the book, is the memoir of Roderick Macrae, the young man accused of the murder – a murder he admits to carrying out – written from his jail cell as he awaits trial. He describes his life growing up on a croft in a state of poverty and the increasing malevolence shown towards his family, especially his father, by the local Constable Lachlan Mackenzie, one of the three individuals murdered by Roddy. Roddy is unusually articulate and educated, something which marks him out in the small community of Culduie. He’s also withdrawn, something of a loner and quite sensitive which makes his subsequent actions all the more surprising.

But can we believe everything Roddy describes in his memoir? Small details that emerge from other documents, but which are omitted from his account, suggest perhaps we can’t. He doesn’t dispute he committed the murders, the brutal nature of which he describes in a chillingly dispassionate way, but what was his motive? Was it revenge for the suffering inflicted on his family or an act of insanity? What’s brilliant about the book is that the author lets us, the reader, come to our own conclusions.

The story also touches on topics such as inequality of power. A scene which illustrates this is when Roddy’s father, John, is told by Lachlan Mackenzie that he can no longer collect seaweed to fertilise his crops because it belongs to the laird. This is just one example of the personal malevolence directed at him by Lachlan Mackenzie. John Macrae is a piteable figure, subjected to just about every misfortune you can think of, including the threat of eviction from the land he cultivates. His inarticulacy and poor grasp of English means he is unable to stand up for himself, especially when he appears as a witness at Roddy’s trial. The one person who believes in Roddy’s innocence, albeit on grounds of insanity, is his advocate, Mr Sinclair. Are his efforts on Roddy’s behalf in vain? You’ll have to read the book to find out.

His Bloody Project will immerse you in the life of Culduie and its inhabitants whilst demanding your close attention to the evidence presented to you. It’s a fascinating experience and one I very much enjoyed.

In three words : Ingenious, compelling, authentic Try something similar : The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins

About the Author

Graeme Macrae Burnet was born in Kilmarnock in 1967. He studied English Literature at Glasgow University before spending some years teaching in France, the Czech Republic and Portugal. He then took an M.Litt in International Security Studies at St Andrews University and fell into a series of jobs in television. These days he lives in Glasgow.

He has been writing since he was a teenager. His first book, The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau (2014), is a literary crime novel set in a small town in France. His second novel, His Bloody Project (2015), revolves around the murder of a village birleyman in nineteenth century Wester Ross. He likes Georges Simenon, the films of Michael Haneke and black pudding. (Photo/bio: Goodreads author page)

Connect with Graeme Website | X | Facebook

One thought on “ Book Review – His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet @SarabandBooks ”

I am going to Scotland later this year. I feel like I should start stacking my kindle with some books set in Scotland!

Thanks for sharing this review with the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge

A Novel Bookblog

Book banter & reviews, review: his bloody project by graeme macrae burnet.

Roddy’s story unfolds amid the competing voices of his own prison memoir, court testimony, newspaper cuttings and police statements – a tragic and unsettling whydunnit that provides the reader with no easy answers.

Graeme Macrae Burnet first came to our attention last year, fresh off the success of his Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award and the publication of his debut novel, The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau. Describing it then, I declared it ‘a masterful character study with a metafictional impulse…a clever beast indeed’. Those words seemed worth revisiting as I reviewed His Bloody Projec t – at odds with his debut in almost every aspect (historical, not modern; Scotland, not France; non-linear epistolary narrative, not plain crime) – and yet just as masterful, clever and playful. It is every inch the riveting second novel I had hoped for.

From its setting in the small Highland hamlet of Culduie to its reconstruction of the Inverness trial and its coverage, the novel does a clever job indeed of authentically recreating a background for events that never really happened. In his preface, Burnet teases with the somewhat credible notion that Roddy’s memoir – the novel’s centrepiece – is a real historical document discovered whilst researching his family’s history. It is a fictional device he used in his first novel, and one he uses well – a playful acknowledgement of the authorial role and what this might mean for the fidelity of the narrative.

The centrepiece, as noted above, is Roddy’s own memoir. But that does not mean that the novel’s lasting ‘truth’ can be found in his words, his interpretation of events. The novel is a why dunnit, a study of sanity and perception, and for that reason, Burnet weaves the voices and interpretations of myriad others through the novel, unseating the reader just as they assume they have reached some degree of understanding. Indeed, before Roddy’s account is provided, we read first the author’s own preface, followed by police statements of Roddy’s neighbours. These character statements make clear from the outset that individual perception varies wildly – a thrilling and dangerous supposition for the rest of the novel. Carmina Smoke describes Roddy as a ‘pleasant child’ who became ‘a courteous and obliging young man’, while the Reverend identifies in the same boy an ‘easily discernible wickedness’. Later, as trial testimony further complicates Roddy’s story, the reader is forced to accept that there may indeed be inconsistencies in all of the narrative strands provided, and that the facts can only be found through a complex process of piecing together fragments of several competing voices. Clouded by personal bias, ignorance of the facts or by rampant speculation, each character only further underpins the terrifying notion we might never truly know what happened the day Roddy Macrae brutally murdered three people.

Much like the jurors on Roddy’s trial, the reader him/herself must draw together the composite strands to form their own interpretation. But who is the authority here? Is it Roddy Macrae? Is it Graeme Macrae Burnet? Do we, as readers with our own biases, fill in certain gaps and reach our own (different) conclusions? It is a clever device. One that will force many to compulsively return to the first page and re-read with a renewed vigour and keener sense for inconsistency.

The reader’s tireless pursuit of the truth may leave them flagging very slightly by the end – the trial itself is in places realistically laborious, and lacks the freshness of Roddy’s memoir – but the payoff is worth it. Burnet refuses to provide easy answers, and it is with the unsettling sense that a grotesque injustice has been committed that the novel closes. Whether that injustice has been levelled against Roddy, his three victims, or something else entirely is a matter for the reader.

The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau demonstrated that Graeme Macrae Burnet was a writer to watch out for. His Bloody Project confirms that he is one of the most experimental and assured authors currently writing in Scotland. More, please.

Review: His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet

When I was perusing the longlist for this year’s booker prize, His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet immediately jumped out at me. Like a sixth sense, I knew that I was going to enjoy this book. The title intrigued me as did the cover. I felt like I need to know more, because this book had to be about more than a murder in a crofting community in Scotland if it was award worth…right?

With literature, I think that there has to be something more than a good story to make it special. Good stories are the starting point, sure, but for a book to grab me by the shoulders and say “Notice me! I’m great” there’s got to be something else going on between the lines.

His Bloody Project is special. Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of the writing style. Graeme Macrae Burnet doesn’t need big words to wrap you in circles as you try to navigate what’s true and false in this plot. He deftly leads you down one path. He helps you to assume a point of view. Then he throws in a little detail that makes you rethink the whole plot up until that point.

What Is It Even About?

“The year is 1869. A brutal triple murder in a remote community in the Scottish Highlands leads to the arrest of a young man by the name of Roderick Macrae. A memoir written by the accused makes it clear that he is guilty, but it falls to the country’s finest legal and psychiatric minds to uncover what drove him to commit such merciless acts of violence. Was he mad? Only the persuasive powers of his advocate stand between Macrae and the gallows.”

But beyond that, His Bloody Project navigates the troubled path between what we do, and what we say we do. What we remember and what we want to remember. And importantly, what others say, remember and will admit to.

What is truth, if no one is prepared to claim it? And if we can’t get at the truth, how can we truly understand the crime? These are the questions that Graeme Macrae Burnet is concerned with. Undoubtedly, Roderick Macrae viciously kills three people but the question of why remains shrouded in mystery.

Why Should I Read It?

If you love psychological thrillers that play with your perceptions of right and wrong, then His Bloody Project is ideal for you. By mixing the styles of prose between memoir, newspaper reports and psychological analysis, Graeme Macrae Burnet is able to twist and play with your perspective right from the start. Each account comes with its own bias attached. Journalists who want to sensationalise and psychologists eager to prove their own fledgling theories. It all combines to create a disjointed assortment of facts heavily obscured by opinion.

He twists your sympathies towards Roddy, only to offhandedly reveal a new (gory) detail that leaves you feeling uncomfortable. These entirely believable metafictional games add to the conundrum of picking the truth from lies. Wading through layer upon layer of conjecture and fiction and ulterior motive to get the heart of the matter makes for outstanding reading though.

Beyond the crime, I was also fascinated to read about a part of history that is largely ignored. I was vaguely aware of the ‘The Highland Clearances’. But I didn’t know much about their impact. This book takes place in an 1869 crofting community that is scratching a subsistence from an increasingly hostile environment. This glimpse into the injustice and prejudice these communities faced as well as how precarious their lives were, was shocking.

“The outlook in these parts is that if one is to be visited by misfortune, there is nothing that can be done to avoid it.”

So, Will You Be Adding His Bloody Project to Your Reading List?

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COMMENTS

His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the Case of ...
His Bloody Project, a 2016 Booker Prize nominee, by Graeme Macrae Burnet is a real find. I listened to the audio book and was delighted with the narrator's fine Scottish brogue. Set in the Scottish Highlands in 1869, this is the story of a triple murder by 17 year old Roderick Macrae.
"His Bloody Project" Book Review - What The Scot?
His Bloody Project is a fascinating piece of historical literary crime fiction. It’s also a really well done “why”dunnit. Three people are murdered in a small Highland community and the accused murderer has written a deposition that says that he is unequivocally guilty.
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His Bloody Project - Five Books Expert Reviews
His Bloody Project. Graeme Macrae Burnet’s brilliant, destabilising literary thriller uses (fictional) historical documents to construct a complex story of murder, corruption and unreliable narrators set in the 19th-century Scottish highlands. Long-listed for the Booker Prize.
Reading guide: His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2016, His Bloody Project reveals the provisional nature of truth through a fictional 19th-century triple murder in a remote Scottish crofting community. Whether you’re new to His Bloody Project or have read it and would like to explore it more deeply, here is our comprehensive guide.
His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet review — crime and ...
A young crofter, Roderick Macrae, wrote up the catastrophes of his life while awaiting trial in Inverness in 1869, accused of three savage killings. Macrae appears to have entered (with murderous...
His Bloody Project review: In cold blood in the Highlands
Author: Graeme Macrae Burnet. ISBN-13: 978-1910192146. Publisher: Contraband. Guideline Price: £8.99. A dreadful crime is committed: three members of the same family are murdered in their modest...
Book Review – His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet ...
The year is 1869. A brutal triple murder in a remote community in the Scottish Highlands leads to the arrest of a young man by the name of Roderick Macrae.
Review: His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet
Review: His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet 1869: 17-year-old Roderick ‘Roddy’ Macrae has just brutally murdered three people in the remote Scottish village of Culduie. He stands calmly in the road, covered in their blood, and informs his neighbours of what he has done.
Review: His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet - The ...
His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet is shortlisted for this year's Man Booker Prize. Here's why you need to read it immediately.