Like a highball mix of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen, Christopher Brookmyre hits you hard and fast. Now Brookmyre is back with his most lethal book yet: One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night. Gavin Hutchinson had it all planned out. A unique "floating holiday experience" on a converted North Sea oil rig, a haven for tourists who want a vacation but without the hassle of actually going anywhere. And what better way to test out his venture than to host a fifteenth-year high school reunion, the biggest social event of his life, except no one remembers who Gavin is. That, and his wife has discovered his philandering ways and plans to leave him with a very public announcement in front of his assembled guests. Throw in a band of mercenaries who crash the party even though they aren't on the guest list, and you have a wicked farce of a thriller from one of the most original voices in mystery fiction.

From Booklist

Pulp Fiction meets And Then There Were None in this blend of thriller and black comedy. Brookmyre has a gift for keeping the reader continually off balance, sure only that some kind of horrific joke is about to be played, like the severed arm that falls out of the sky on the first day of grouse hunting in the Highlands, clonking a just-retired detective on the head. Two plot threads move toward each other: one involves a loose assemblage of mercenary terrorists, the other a 15-year class reunion organized by a classmate whom no one remembers. The threads knit together, sort of like a noose, when both groups board a North Shore oil rig outfitted for the tourist trade. With a dizzying display of mayhem and violence, the action then shuttles between the mercenaries' plot and the various amorous designs, one-upmanship games, and betrayals enacted by the reunion celebrants. Not for the faint of heart. Connie Fletcher
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Review

'A high octane sense of the absurd' THE TIMES 'Tremendous fun' THE GUARDIAN 'The next star of the genre seems set to be Christopher Brookmyre' Mark Lawson 'Dark, violent and very funny.' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'The premise is certainly implausable but Brookmyre has more than enough wit to pull it off.' SUNDAY TIMES 'There are enough twists and turns to satisfy the most expectant reader.' SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY 'This novel is furiously paced and wonderfully absurd, with more one-liners than a Columbian coke dealer... Brookmyre has no equal.' MAXIM 'Christopher Brookmyre's One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night is a lethal farce in which nothing goes quite according to plan. The mercenaries and terrorists who seize an oil rig converted into an international resort are almost too busy wanting to kill each other to get on with the job, for one thing, and, for another, the group they take hostage are a high-school reunion rather than the conference of the internationally famous they are expecting. One of the high-school year went on to be a famous gangland hardman before reforming, and another is a darkly brilliant comic whose career is on the skids--and a couple more have spent far too much time in the cinema not to know what Bruce Willis would do... This is a splendidly constructed darkly funny novel in which the oddest things prove suddenly lethal and in which the imagined geography of a closed environment is at once a trap, and a playground for heroism, double cross and the sudden discovery of true love. The running gags and knowingness about movies ought to be less amusing than they are, but Brookmyre's underlying affection for ordinary people and contempt for bullies stops them being self-indulgent.' AMAZON.CO.UK