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| Flesh House | 
 enlarge | Author: Stuart Macbride
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Category: Book
Buy New: £30.99
New (2) from £30.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  35 reviews
Sales Rank: 21444
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 480
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.7
ISBN: 0007244541
EAN: 9780007244546
ASIN: 0007244541
Publication Date: May 6, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
fUNNY, BUT UNREMITTINGLY GRIM August 24, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Aberdeen Tourist Board must have collective heart failure every time a novel by Stuart Macbride is published. It's always raining, the streets are overrun with deranged serial killers, and the Grampian Police is full of lazy, backbiting incompetents who never miss an opportunity to put the boot into the long suffering hero DS Logan Macrae. Yet 'Flesh House', Macbride's latest, is a very exciting read, a real page turner, and certainly not to be read last thing at night. It's extremely gruesome and there's no let-up as the unremittingly grim events unfold. I just hope the plot and characters lighten up a bit in Macbride's next book which I eagerly await.
 Readable but little more August 9, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
I've read all MacBride's novels but sadly they don't get any better. I can only agree with another reviewer that as a writer, MacBride can't take anything seriously. Because of this, I found some of the quite nasty things in this book, and the so-called gory bits actually quite funny.[e.g. black pudding....has it put me off the stuff? No way!!] My point is that this shouldn't happen in a crime novel. You really should be horrified or feel that the police are getting somewhere in catching nasty villains. What you get here is a Punch + Judy show. Mark Billingham has been a stand-up comedian but knows how far to take humour, when to stop. As a result, he is a very fine crime writer. Equally, I don't think too many people laugh at Stephen King's novels. I think Stuart MacBride is currently caught between a number of stools and needs to take stock.
Loved it/hated it but couldn't stop reading it August 7, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
First Sentence: `No, you listen to me: if my six year old son isn't back here in ten minutes I'm going to come round there and rip you a new arsehole, are we clear?'
Twenty years ago, there was a serial killer knows as "The Flesher" who was purported to kill people and eat them.
Now, seven years after the killer has been released from prison, human meat has been found in a local butcher shop and DS Logan McRae are trying to track down a serial killer dressed in a butcher's apron wearing a Margaret Thatcher mask.
I had a love/hate relationship with this book. Be aware that murders are very graphic and gruesome, but I can deal with that.
My issue is the characters. McRae is about the only remotely likeable character and, even for him, you have very little background or real sense of who he is. The characters are realistic but largely unpleasant.
On the other hand, the plot, while unrelentingly grim, is thoroughly engrossing and delightfully twisty. There was less humor in this book than in ones in the past. A bit more light to offset the dark would have helped.
McBride is definitely a good, skilled writer. I can't say I enjoyed the book, because of the theme, but I couldn't stop reading it.
 Very disappointing August 6, 2008
7 out of 13 found this review helpful
I'm as baffled by all those good reviews as I am by the low quality of this book. I've read the other three in the series and couldn't wait to lay my hand on number four - what a mistake.
I won't complain about the bad prose, I knew MacBride is no Shakespeare and I didn't expect him to stun me with graceful words.
But - I did expect to be entertained, I did expect to bite my nails and read all night, I did expect to care about the characters, none of which happened due to an overkill of, well, killing. After a while I had to go back and forth to remind myself who the victims were and why I should care.
Every chapter is a carbon copy of the one before, introduction of victims, chop chop, a red herring here and there (as obvious as daylight and very insulting to the reader's intelligence), enter the cops etc etc and the solution is ridiculous.
Mac Bride tried too hard to shock me and it didn't work!
a terrible effort July 23, 2008
6 out of 16 found this review helpful
I listened to the audio version of this novel, and was extremely disappointed. I've lived in Aberdeenshire all my life and I've never heard anyone talking the way they do in this audio novel. So to the publishers: Either get someone with an Aberdeen accent to read the next novel, or don't bother trying, & just go with "BBC" English all the way. What you've done with this one is inauthentic, offputting and yes, insulting.
I listened ti the CDs, n it ended up gan oot the car windie. I've bed up here a ma life n ah've niver heard onybody speakin like at, they ether need ti git an Aberdonian on board for i next ane, or dinna bather wi accents at a. Fit thiv diene wie this book is nithing short o a disgrace.
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