Novel approach

Where to start? | Suggest a pairing

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Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre

Christopher Brookmyre's breezy novels, combine mystery corpses, homegrown villains and have-a-go heroes, with a good seasoning of explosions, car-chases, guns and smart comebacks. With snappy dialogue, sweeping plots and extended rants on topics from political reform to football, it's Brookmyre's Scotland. Sometimes we wish we lived in it.

It's the shamble-lyk-a-shot-stirk, Randall and-ah Hopkirk
Bad Shaman Blues
Thi hokum-frichtenin, scrotum-tichtenin
Bad Shaman Blues
Bad Shaman Blues

W N Herbert, Bad Shaman Blues

W N Herbert's world, on the other hand, is not all Scotland, but it's pure genius – genuine genius, kind of alarming but totally irresistible. Probably there's no topic, no form, no style, no reference that he can't handle, in or out of Scots. Some poems beg to be performed, others hit the heart – and as groups of poems build up, stories expand from them. You can follow the twisting, brilliant arguments about what poems can do, or you can enjoy being swept along with the torrent.

Bad Shaman Blues by W N Herbert

Pairings & synopses

	High Fidelity | Zoom!
	The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency | The Good Neighbour
	The Family Way | Newborn
	The Algebraist | Spirit Machines
	The God Of Small Things | Postcards From God
	The Night Watch | The Book Of Blood
	Fleshmarket Close | Dead Redhead
	Bridget Jones's Diary | Leaving And Leaving You
	Quite Ugly One Morning | Bad Shaman Blues
	The Shipping News | The Tree House
	Shadow Of The Wind | The Eyes
	Back When We Were Grownups | Granny Scarecrow