A tale etched in blood and hard black pencil

They first met at primary school, Martin, Colin, James, Eleanor, Karen, Robbie, Boma, Helen, Scot, Joanne. Together they were taught the alphabet and their tables, some of them fought each other and they all learned how to recognise the laws of the pack - the strong, the weak, the bampots. Through secondary school, puberty and adolesence they progressed through the system, their relationships shifting, sometimes coalescing, often fracturing. Then twenty years later one of them is dead, one is in intensive care and another is in custody charged with murder. And on the fringes of the investigation are others from that original class - the detective inspector, the lawyer, the local hard man and the pub owner. Does knowing someone since childhood enable one to know who is capable of killing in adulthood? Or is there some nugget in their shared experience which explains the messy murder scene in the hills outside Glasgow? With characteristic brio, humour and style, Christopher Brookmyre has created not so much a whodunnit, but a why-didn't-we-see-this-one-coming.