Graeme Macrae Burnet
Born in Kilmarnock, Graeme Macrae Burnet is among the UK’s leading contemporary novelists, having achieved both critical acclaim and best-selling status around the world. He lives in Glasgow, where he studied film and English literature. After teaching English overseas and working as a researcher in the television industry, he won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in 2013 and now writes full-time. He is best known for his dazzling Booker-shortlisted second novel, His Bloody Project. Graeme is also the author of two French-set detective novels: The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau (2014) and The Accident on the A35 (2017). Case Study is his fourth novel and was longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize.
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Man Booker Prize 2016, shortlist.
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 it 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 merciless 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 mesmerising literary thriller set in an unforgiving landscape where the exercise of power is arbitrary.
Prizes and awards
SHORTLISTED, Man Booker Prize 2016
WINNER, Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year 2016
SHORTLISTED, LA Times Book Awards 2016
WINNER, Vrij Nederland Thriller of the Year 2017
SHORTLISTED, Sunday Herald Culture Awards, Author of the Year 2017
REVIEWS OF His Bloody Project
'Spellbinding… Riveting, dark and ingeniously constructed.' - Sunday Times
'A fiendishly readable tale that richly deserves the wider attention the Booker has brought it.' - The Guardian Read more
'Gripping, blackly playful and intelligent.' - The Times
'One of the most convincing and engrossing novels of the year.' - The Scotsman
'An astonishing piece of writing… a voice that sounds startlingly authentic.' - The Telegraph
Herald Books of the Year 2015 Read more
'One of the most enjoyable and involving novels you’ll read this year.' - Alastair Braidwood Read more
'The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau demonstrated that Graeme Macrae Burnet was a writer to watch out for. His Bloody Project confirms that he is one of the most experimental and assured authors currently writing in Scotland. More, please.' Read more
'Psychologically astute and convincingly grounded in its environment, this study of petty persecution and murder is a fine achievement from an ambitious and accomplished writer.' - The National Read more
'A deeply satisfying read.' - Undiscovered Scotland Read more
'A real box of tricks… a truly ingenious thriller as confusingly multilayered as an Escher staircase.' – Jake Kerridge