The year is 1869. A brutal triple murder in a remote community in the Scottish Highlands leads to the arrest of a young man by the name of Roderick Macrae. A memoir written by the accused makes its clear that he is guilty, but it falls to the country's finest legal and psychiatric minds to uncover what drove him to commit such merciles acts of violence.
Was he mad? Only the persuasive powers of his advocate stand between Macrae and the gallows.
Graeme Macrae Burnet tells an irresistible and original story about the provisional nature of truth, even when the facts seem clear. His Bloody Project is a mesmersing literary thriller set in an unforgiving landscape where the exercise of power is arbitrary.
I love the number of blurbs this book has without any reference to Scotland there is. Whitewashing strikes again. Honestly, its odd because it is extremely Scottish in themes and location. 19th Century Highlands was a special place of sadness which comes up in the plot.
This is the found footage of books, but luckily shakey cam is not recreated in this. It's made up of "Historical" documents mostly made up of Roddy own account of what lead him to the murders as well as summary of newspapers and witness accounts. This in the style of other faked documents, except without the deception of by a know killer, like the several apparent diaries of Jack the Ripper that I have read and its done very well.
This is not a book answers, that way it actually like history. I have tons of questions, I know very little facts about the plot of this book. Its written really well as historical thing (in opinion of someone who reads that stuff sometimes). That does make it a very dry in places with words no longer in use.
Overall, I give this 4/5 stars for digging peat. I liked this book, and now I'm going to tell people its YA book to see if anyone will believe me with that title. It was an interesting look at this time period.
