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A review by rebus
His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick MacRae by Graeme Macrae Burnet
5.0
Easily one of the best and most class conscious novels ever written, very certainly the best in the last 30 years outside of Alan Moore's wonderful Jerusalem (sadly he's no Millennial hope and they still haven't produced even one good writer, but a member of my own Gen X, but one of the good ones born before 1973, when all Gen Xers seemed to be more like those insipid Millennials).
Roddy, of course, is portrayed as a bad seed simply for insulting the gentry and for preventing them from killing a magnificent stag during a hunt. Roddy was clearly deeply abused by his father, a religious nazi, loved animals, and was perhaps on the spectrum, as he kept to himself most of the time and engaged often in what might be termed now as stimming behaviors. He knew also that a better path was not open to him, despite the efforts of his superiors to guide him toward education, a point I could really relate to on a personal level.
The elites are almost all drunken assholes who abuse everyone around them, even forcing an incredibly violent sport (shinty) upon them during what is termed a celebration. The local minister is equally a fascist, taking delight in evicting Roddy's family from their home and livelihood, saying he should have been at church more often (the rev is described also as having an unbending will). These elites also promulgated fictions about criminality being hereditary, when it has always been a function of class oppression. Roddy truly was a resistance agent fighting back against oppression. The psychiatrist is perhaps the worst of all, dissing Roddy's attorney for being rural and less educated, arrogantly making pronouncements about how Roddy was clearly of 'low' breeding stock (when in fact Roddy could have taken him down with a single blow). He even dismisses the harassment of Lachlan Broad as 'trivial' and believes that corporal punishment could have saved the lad (when in fact he has suffered much of that abuse in childhood).
Which is why this tale is not a 'whodunnit' so much as it is asking why he did it. The trial was a mere show trial, a spectacle and theater for the masses, and despite the long deliberation it did not go well for young Roddy, a talented lad trapped in circumstances out of his control. The real hereditary criminals are the fascists who have always run society.
Roddy is clearly the hero of this tale--don't believe the idiotic reviewers here who said they feel bad for empathizing with a sociopath, as Roddy absolutely does not fit the diagnosis for sociopath, while ALL of the other characters among the elites are stone cold psychos, not to mention Lachlan and the religious types--who was further demonized by Kenny Smoke for having raped and mutilated Flora Broad post mortem, which clearly did not happen according to Roddy's account (it seems Kenny may have done this deed, but he and his wife were able to put on the airs of high society and fool the public into believing they were of that class, likely to hide Kenny's necrophilia).
A masterpiece that is more class conscious than all of the modern virtue signaling over meaningless and trivial topics combined.
Roddy, of course, is portrayed as a bad seed simply for insulting the gentry and for preventing them from killing a magnificent stag during a hunt. Roddy was clearly deeply abused by his father, a religious nazi, loved animals, and was perhaps on the spectrum, as he kept to himself most of the time and engaged often in what might be termed now as stimming behaviors. He knew also that a better path was not open to him, despite the efforts of his superiors to guide him toward education, a point I could really relate to on a personal level.
The elites are almost all drunken assholes who abuse everyone around them, even forcing an incredibly violent sport (shinty) upon them during what is termed a celebration. The local minister is equally a fascist, taking delight in evicting Roddy's family from their home and livelihood, saying he should have been at church more often (the rev is described also as having an unbending will). These elites also promulgated fictions about criminality being hereditary, when it has always been a function of class oppression. Roddy truly was a resistance agent fighting back against oppression. The psychiatrist is perhaps the worst of all, dissing Roddy's attorney for being rural and less educated, arrogantly making pronouncements about how Roddy was clearly of 'low' breeding stock (when in fact Roddy could have taken him down with a single blow). He even dismisses the harassment of Lachlan Broad as 'trivial' and believes that corporal punishment could have saved the lad (when in fact he has suffered much of that abuse in childhood).
Which is why this tale is not a 'whodunnit' so much as it is asking why he did it. The trial was a mere show trial, a spectacle and theater for the masses, and despite the long deliberation it did not go well for young Roddy, a talented lad trapped in circumstances out of his control. The real hereditary criminals are the fascists who have always run society.
Roddy is clearly the hero of this tale--don't believe the idiotic reviewers here who said they feel bad for empathizing with a sociopath, as Roddy absolutely does not fit the diagnosis for sociopath, while ALL of the other characters among the elites are stone cold psychos, not to mention Lachlan and the religious types--who was further demonized by Kenny Smoke for having raped and mutilated Flora Broad post mortem, which clearly did not happen according to Roddy's account (it seems Kenny may have done this deed, but he and his wife were able to put on the airs of high society and fool the public into believing they were of that class, likely to hide Kenny's necrophilia).
A masterpiece that is more class conscious than all of the modern virtue signaling over meaningless and trivial topics combined.