The Weirdness

I have just finished reading Christopher Brookmyre's Be My Enemy and it was hugely enjoyable. He is one of the foremost satirical authors in the UK and writes a kind of crime fiction. I say a kind of because he is very hard to classify and label, much in the same way that Iain Banks is. He is often likened to Carl Hiaasen but to my mind is much funnier and subtler. While he normally starts out in a manner that lulls you into thinking that you are confronted with a run-of-the-mill, slightly formulaic English murder story, his plots then twist and turn in commendably devious ways, and he always has a deliciously nasty little surprise in store for the reader. It's one of those moments where you burst out laughing, then clap your hand over your mouth and look guiltily over your shoulder, appalled at what you had just found funny. He has a wonderful sense for titles as well, as my favourite testifies: A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away. Which set me thinking about other, off-beat, titles I really like. Somewhere near the top of the list features Kyril Bonfiglioli's Something Nasty In The Woodshed, closely followed by Tibor Fischer's Don't Read This If You're Stupid, (although I much preferred the content of The Thought Gang). Irvine Welsh is not to be left out with If You Liked School, You'll Love Work... . Haruki Murakami, (with one is tempted to say Oriental inscrutability) produces almost exclusively weird titles, but The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle remains a high-point scorer on the bewildering-the-reader scale.