Flesh House: The fourth Logan McRae thriller No.1 in Sunday Times bestseller Scottish detective crime series

Well, that was a particularly gruesome read and definitely not for the faint hearted!! Be warned this may put you off eating meat for a while. Twenty years ago, 'The Flesher' was the nickname given to an Aberdeen serial killer who butchered and ate his victims. A suspect was charged and convicted, but later released on appeal, despite the police believing they had caught the right man. Now the Flesher is back! People have been disappearing and victims are being hacked into choice cuts after death. Yes, this is dark and macabre but somehow didn't totally gross me out. Maybe because the writing is so good, the plot so well thought out and the characters all so well drawn or maybe it's because there is a good dose of humour and laugh out loud moments throughout to defuse the ickyness of the subject matter. DS Logan McRae is assigned to the case with first DI Insch as his boss and then DI Steel. Overweight and grumpy Insch is just as given to fits of anger as ever. His fights with DI Steel are legendary and his team take bets on when he's going to hit someone, provided he doesn't blow a fuse first. DI Steel provides lighter moments with comments on her malfunctioning underwear, her relationship with her clucky girlfriend and her ability to relegate all work down the line. As before, Logan is the one who makes connections and looks outside the box, as any good detective should, and provides many of the breakthroughs in the case. Adding lightness and humour to the plot is Alec, a BBC reporter attempting to follow the police around with his camera for a documentary on real policing. There are some sad moments too when McBride is not afraid to sacrifice one of his characters for the sake of a good plot. This is proving to be an excellent, if somewhat gritty, series and I can't wait to read the next book.

Stuart MacBride's third installment in the Logan McRae series is one of the darkest, most gruesome, grisly books you will ever read. Without the comic relief delivered in the badinage, especially in the person of DI Roberta Steel, the book would be nearly impossible to read. MacBride is a master of pace, of alternately bringing events to a fever pitch and then throttling them back into the more mundane and boring tasks of policing. While he threatens to plumb his characters more deeply, the effort falls short, a prisoner to plot and action. This is what keeps MacBride a few paces behind Ian Rankin, though, in fairness this is his third book. The Flesher has returned to Aberdeen. Hannibal Lector has nothing on this literal butcher of couples. Not only does the Flesher kill and dismember the victims, often the remains are part of a repast fed to surviving members or introduced into the food chain. The shrill paranoia of the media also plays a role in this police procedural. Detective Sergeant McRae remains the favorite boy of two Detective Inspectors, Steel and David Insch, an overweight task master given to consuming massive quantities of sweets. McRae's leaps of logic, dogged police work, inquisitive mind and intuition make his a formidable opponent. McRae is a sergeant, a step or two above a constable, but still closer in age and character to the rank-and-file than he is to the middle management of the force. He is an everyman of sorts, not above pub crawling or hanging with his mates. As in the previous books, he also finds a way to get himself trashed physically along the way, with some of the punishment doled out by his colleagues. What troubled me as a reader is unfinished business. The lack of resolution in novels, especially series novels, is annoying at best, a cheat at its worst. James Patterson and Nelson DeMille are experts at this, to their detriment. There is a difference in not being able to bring the antagonist to justice because of legal or evidentiary issues, quite another to allow the story to arc to a subsequent book. At 467 pages, I am not looking for a serial. Like Rankin's Edinburgh, Aberdeen is as much a character as any other. The city supports the offshore oil industry, and even by Scottish standards, the weather is harsh. While Flesh House is not MacBride's best effort, it is a page-turner.

This was an easy read with wee bits of humor. The authors style is easy which kept me engaged throughout the read. However, the characters seemed flat, one-dimensional & not that interesting. I found the denouement a bit anti-climactic & over-dramatic, sort of like a loud bang that produced little fireworks. I will not read any more of MacBrides books.

The fourth book in the Logan MacRae series definitely stands out amongst the other novels in the series. It has a flashier style with its newspaper clippings serving as chapter breaks. Even images are included! And the camera crew following DI Insch allows for screenplay like snippets to be added as well. This very multimedia angle adds to the overall excitement. When combined with the central plot - a gruesome, cannibalistic serial killer (nicknamed "The Flesher") makes a return to murder after a twenty year hiatus, the book quickly becomes impossible to set aside. So much so, that despite its relative heft (nearly five hundred pages), I read it one sitting until the very early hours of the following day! It is definitely the darkest book in the series - even more horrific than Cold Granite . MacBride offers the killer's perspective in places, which adds to the tension and terror. The book includes a nice summary of the characters and some highlights from previous novels, so it would be possible to start the series here (though not recommended - the first three books in the series are great - though this one is my favorite). This is the fastest-paced, strongest and most exciting installment of the series. And though it is the darkest as well, MacBride breaks up the grim gore with the bantering dialogue of the police force as well as the ups and downs of those relationships. MacBride throws in some huge twists and turns to the plot, too. It is genuinely frightening and some beloved characters really suffer here. It's gruesome (with a cannibalistic serial killer could you expect anything else?) and includes plenty of untimely death. And the ending is downright chilling... This is certainly the strongest book in the series and MacBride's most unpredictable plot yet! I can't wait to see what he follows this up with next in this terrific series!

I have been binge reading the books in this series. Set in Aberdeen Scotland, the characters are smart, funny, and hilariously provincial. I can't stop, am on to the 5th book and loving every page. This one is the darkest, yet the characters, the language and the plot twists make it light and so enjoyable.

I've been reading Stuart MacBride's bleakly hysterical mystery fiction since his first Aberdeen police procedural landed in the States several years back. I find myself in the position of having to buy replacements, since I keep giving copies to friends. I confess limited experience with Scotland, but I can recognize somebody who has had an abundance of experience with one form or another of bureaucratic flaying, stretching and trimming, and who understands the sly workings of those particular authoritarian nightmares. Mr. MacBride has a deep sympathy for humanity in general, and a keen eye for the underdog. All these show up in Flesh House, The fourth outing for Mr. MacBride's Detective Sergeant Logan MacRae. When I was a kid, series mysteries were by and large puzzle driven. Most of them were quite formulaic. The object was for the reader to solve the mystery before the end of the book, and the reader hoped the writer would play fair. The result was not bad, but in many ways quite predictable. I loved Nero Wolfe, for example, and enjoyed the predictable cast and situations that appeared with him; but the net effect falls short of being a fully involving emotional experience: A snack, not a meal. Mr. MacBride writes detective fiction in which (at least the illusion of) things actually happen to the hero that affect him, and will continue to affect him for the rest of his life. Sometimes these things are physical, such as events that happened to him during a disastrous run-in with a criminal early in the series. Some things happen that are psychological, such as will happen to him in this book, that will certainly affect him through the next several books. Mr. MacBride knows that people don't bounce back from everything, and that is an advantage for a canny writer who is willing to take risks in his writing. And Mr. MacBride is certainly willing to do that. He also seems to have an eye for which risks he can take that will pay off. The opening premise of the novel is that somebody is kidnapping folks from the North sea oil port of Aberdeen, and is not only turning them into his own private food supply, but he also may be allowing some of the extra bits and pieces to wend their way into the community meat supply. This is hardly civic. Tips therefore start an investigation into what certainly seems to be dodgy chow on one of the oil rigs at sea. As the investigation widens, rage and panic spread through the community. Initial focus locks onto a suspect in a 20 year old series of crimes following a similar pattern. That suspect has been released from prison for reasons that throw an unpleasant light upon the police. Detective sergeant Logan MacRae must now pick his way through a political minefield in his attempt to follow the facts without being fired. Pressures from the press and his superiors mount, and the kidnappings continue. Dead ends make the police look inept, and MacRae's superiors look like they are putting more effort into covering their asses than into solving the crimes. MacBride's bleakly acerbic wit deftly deflates the pompous and self righteous without getting in its own way and impeding the plot or character development, a mark of high skill. Marvelously enough, one has the sense that Mr. MacBride has compassion and affection for his characters, even those who may not be such wonderful folks overall. A round of bacon bunties all around, Mr. MacBride! This is very fine writing indeed. I have money set aside as well for your new book, forthcoming in January. Indeed, as would be any sane man, I am pounding the table for it.

Well written and suspenseful. I was kept guessing for most of the book as there were some nice red herrings to distract me. All the usual Cops are there and most become more likeable in each book of his that I have read. Recommended.

I have listened to all of the Logan MacRae series on audiobook with the exception of "Flesh House", since I can't find it as an audio download anywhere. It's only available on audio CD in unabridged form ( Flesh House ) for almost $100. I can wait until it comes out in abridged format. Stuart MacBride is absolutely BRILLIANT and, IMHO, this book is some of his best work. I love the characters in the series (especially DI Steel) and DS Logan MacRae is definitely not one of your run-of-the-mill crime novel heroes. He's smart, cranky, and makes loads of mistakes (and frequently gets the mickey taken out of him by Steel, et al), while still managing to catch the bad guys. I love the way MacBride ends his books. He sort of leaves you hanging a bit and very often introduces a new conundrum to make you anxious for the next book in the series. He uses humor to lighten up what could otherwise be quite gruesome crime scenes. Many of his characters are very UN-politically correct and it seems pretty obvious to me that he has fun writing these novels. If you like edgy and darkly humorous crime fiction, you will LOVE Stuart MacBride's books.

The 4th DS Logan McRae novel is set in November - and it's raining again in Aberdeen. The characters are well developed now and MacBride gives them bad habits and realistic dialogue that just brings them to life off the page. The novel starts in 1987 and these events leading to a former arrest tie in with familiar police characters of the present, reviewing the former case to give clues with a current investigation. I found "Flesh House" to have more graphic detail of the violent acts than previous novels. Colin Miller being forced to eat his own fingers stayed with me for a while! - and there are a lot of scenes that I found "grisly" - but are brilliantly conveyed to the reader. The plot centres around the catching of a Sweeney Todd like character when joints of meat found in a container are not animal but human. As in the previous novels, the dark humour provides the right amount of relief. I laughed on several occasions, even after a sad or gruesome part. MacBride has added newspaper cuttings to this edition, I thought this added a sense of realism to the plot. I can't wait for number 5 in the series.

I really find it very disappointing that detective novels become more and more horror slashers as time progresses. In this book, the number of the people killed needlessly (in terms of plot development) at the end of the story is ridiculous, not to mention the epilogue, which was silly, confusing, and let's face it, a bid for buying the next instalment. Not to mention verging on the psycho/supernatural. I had not enjoyed the ending of the previous book, either, but decided to risk it, hoping things would get better. I'm so sorry, I thought I had a great new series, and the first two books had been funny, just "noir" enough, but in this one, people dying left right and centre, and not at least making an effort to tie up loose ends, instead slapping a "new monster might be born" trope at the end of the book... what is this, a friday the 13th franchise? Again, I suppose chacun à son gout, I'm probably too logical and squeamish, but I can't help feeling it would help to catalogue these books under horror/slasher, not detective novels.

Je n'ai donc pas reçu le livre et n'ai pas écouté le CD. Je serai par contre intéressé de recevoir le livre en format papier (broché).

Describes Scottish countryside so well, and the characters are amazing. Irritating and lovable, Everything he writes is worth reading

Superb story, great characters and very funny in parts. This series has really grown no me. It's pretty twisted in parts though, so be warned!