His Bloody Project

Shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize


The year is 1869. After a brutal triple murder in a remote community in the Scottish Highlands, a young man by the name of Roderick Macrae is arrested for the crime.


A memoir written by the accused makes it clear that he is guilty, but the police and the courts must decide what drove him to murder the local village constable. And why did he kill his other two victims?


Was he insane? Or was this the act of a man in possession of his senses? Only the persuasive powers of his advocate stand between the killer and the gallows at Inverness.


In this compelling and original novel, using the words of the accused, personal testimony, transcripts from the trial and newspaper reports, Graeme Macrae Burnet tells a moving story about the provisional nature of the truth, even when the facts are plain.


His Bloody Project is a mesmerising literary thriller set in an unforgiving landscape where the rules can change but justice is absolute.


Graeme Macrae Burnet was born and brought up in Kilmarnock and now lives in Glasgow, Scotland. In between, he lived in Prague, Bordeaux, Porto and London. His debut novel, The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau, is a psychological crime thriller set in the small town of Saint-Louis on the French–Swiss border. His second book, His Bloody Project, which deals with a triple murder in a crofting village in the Scottish Highlands, has been shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize.


‘A real box of tricks...a truly ingenious thriller.’ Jake Kerridge, Express


‘A gripping crime story, a deeply imagined historical novel, and gloriously written all in one tour-de-force of a book.’ Herald, Book of the Year