Customer Reviews
Readable but little more - By: Jeff, 09 Aug 2008 
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 thingsin this book, & 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 happenin a crime novel. You really should be horrified or feel that the police are getting somewherein 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 & needs to take stock.
Loved it/hated it but couldn't stop reading it - By: L. J. Roberts, 07 Aug 2008 First Sentence: `No, you listen to me: if my six year old son isn't back herein ten minutes I'm going to come round there & 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 & eat them.
Now, seven years after the killer has been released from prison, human meat has been foundin a local butcher shop & DS Logan McRae are trying to track down a serial killer dressedin 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 & 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 & delightfully twisty. There was less humorin this book thanin onesin 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 - By: Nimuje, 06 Aug 2008 
I'm as baffled by all those good reviews as I am by the low quality of this book. I've read the other threein the series & 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 & 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 & 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 & forth to remind myself who the victims were & why I should care.
Every chapter is a carbon copy of the one before, introduction of victims, chop chop, a red herring here & there (as obvious as daylight & very insulting to the reader's intelligence), enter the cops etc etc & the solution is ridiculous.
Mac Bride tried too hard to shock me & it didn't work!
a terrible effort - By: scottishfella65, 23 Jul 2008 I listened to the audio version of this novel, & was extremely disappointed. I've livedin Aberdeenshire all my life & I've never heard anyone talking the way they doin 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 & 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.
Carry On Up the Truncheon - By: one-eyed Jack, 15 Jul 2008 
What annoys me most about Flesh House isn't so much what's inside its pages, but what's written on the front & back covers. Let's start with Mark Billingham (a personal friend of the author if memory serves), who declares : "Fierce, unflinching crime fiction of the highest order". Sorry, but none of that is true, frankly. A more accurate appraisal might have been "Feeble, uninteresting crime fiction of the lowest order." On the back Val Mcdermid calls it "Ferocious & funny" - well, some of the imagery is pretty grim & unpleasant but the relentless attempts at comedy - & I'm talking about on almost every single page & which rarely raise a smile anyway - totally undermine any dark atmosphere the author was trying to create. Reginald Hill opines "If you're looking for taut narrative, gut-churning incident, strong characterisation, all shot through with savagely dark humour, then look no further." Well, Hill's observations are pure fictionin themselves, unless he had said "look elsewhere" for such objectives.
Let me explain why I say these things. The narrative is not taut, it is amongst the worst I have seen, & one of the reasons for this is MacBrides's continued obsession with mixing the narrative style with the dialogue style such that all the expletives spoken by the characters appear just as frequentlyin the narrative. That's amateurish, annoying & arduous for those of us like myself who have put up with this 'method' for four consecutive novels. I shouldn't really even mention the word 'prose' here, because there simply isn't any. It's just words. Nothing poetic, nothing beautiful & nothing to admire. Just as grudging a complaint on my part is the mention of 'strong characterisation', which as a description is funnier than any of MacBride's attempts at comedy after four whole novels.
We have, for want of a better word, a central characterin the form of DS Logan McRae; really all he represents is the story's moral conscience, the one without personality or comedic parody & consequently the most uninteresting personin the tale. Flesh House reads like a debut novel, but then so did all of its predecessors - there is categorically NO character development at all, as everybody looks, sounds & smells exactly the same as they always did. While it's true a few dramatic events fall the way of DI Insch, I am utterly sick & tired of the references to his physical size; if this book represented his introduction to the series it would have been bad enough (the words big', 'huge' & 'fat' must collectively appear well over one hundred times) but for the many who already knew of his dimensions, it's very wearisome.
Savagely dark humour? Try this extract & see if you agree:-
"She wasn't kidding about Insch's mood - by the time Logan bumped into the inspector, he looked as if someone had stuffed a hand grenade up his bum & pulled the pin. The explosion was imminent. Firein the hole."
Er - this is not savage, nor is it dark, & come to think of it, it's not funny either. I get the impression that MacBride likes humour best of all, & is trying (very successfully, it must be said) to sell a comedy storyin the crime fiction genre. The only linein the whole book that raised a smile for me - because it was subtle, for once - was on P.401 of the hardback when Logan is having a conversation over a cup of tea with the pathologist Doc Fraser. Immediately after Doc Fraser gruesomely describes the means of death (which involved decapitation), Logan calmly replies, "Here you go. Milk, two sugars." A very rare example of what might be regarded as clever humour, but all of the rest throughout the tale is straight from the stage of a corny pantomime or a Carry-On film. The 'horrors' are plentiful but these are totally undermined by MacBride's insistence on trying to be funny, & vice versa.
The only saving grace is that Flesh House is a little better than the one before - Broken Skin - which was a complete shambles. The irony is that I have a feeling that MacBride could do much better than this if he wanted to, but has cleverly assessed the demand from the biggest audiencein order to maximise sales. That's writing for money rather than out of passion, but also a sad reflection of the demands & standards of the contemporary British crime-fiction reader who if only they knew, could find much fiercer & more unflinching crime fiction elsewhere (try the first two of Mo Hayder's Jack Caffery series for example), funnier & better-used humour from John Connolly, immeasurably finer prose from R J Ellory & stronger characterisation from Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin or Val McDermid among many others. Flesh House is popcorn crime fiction for the text-message loving populace & little more. There is so much better quality to be found outside of & beyond these pages.
