The Misfit Mob are a bunch of Scottish detectives put together because they are outcasts, troublemakers and compromised. DI Callum MacGregor is one of these and is given all the boring go-nowhere cases until an ancient mummy turns up at the tip and Callum makes a link between this mummy and three missing men. No one expects the team to succeed but they are the only thing standing between the killer’s victims and a slow and painful death.

Not having read Mr MacBride before I didn’t know what to expect, but wasn’t I in for a treat?!!! The book made me giggle because of its comic repartee between the characters and the story was different for a police story, and nauseous during some of the mummy scenes but gripped me throughout the whole book.

In fact, there are a couple of extra story lines going on, but they run along smoothly with the main story and make the 600 pages fly by.

Well written; great characters and funny moments; the perfect book. I LOVED it!! I immediately started on the Logan McRae series.

I would have given this book more stars if I could’ve done but alas I can only give 5.

Helen

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

Loved this latest book by macbride, good to see him expanding into a new series

With thanks to Harper Collins and NetGalley for the opportunity to reacquaint myself with Scottish crime fiction of the highest calibre. Well plotted, plenty going on and with subplots galore, the best bits for me were the characters in the Misfit Mob and their banter - really entertaining. And to think of all those Logan McRae novels just waiting for me, I've a lot of catching up to do.

This was my first Stuart McBride novel, but it won't be my last! The writing was a little idiosyncratic and took a little time to get into, but the effort was rewarded with a novel that was - at the same time - humorous, intriguing and provocative. Although some coincidences required a modest suspension of disbelief this did not unduly detract from the overall enjoyment. Positive features - the humour and teasing relationships between key characters; features that added little or had the potential to be negative - invented settings that are so foolish, given the range of possible Scottish towns and cities and the unnecessary contrived coincidences within the plot. Despite these, though, this was a book that was well worth the time invested in reading.

This was a very dark story, the characters were all failures in life for one reason or another. The investigating police team, rejects from other parts of the force. The underlying story was good but difficult to follow with the timeline jumping from place to place. I didn't become fully involved this time.

Callum McGregor is not a lucky man! Brought up in care after his twin and his parents disappear on the way home from holiday when he was five years old he grew up and joined the police. After a misguided attempt to shield his pregnant girlfriend from the consequences of her mistake on a case he ends up working with the 'Misfit Mob'!

In the fictional Scottish town of Oldcastle there are mummified bodies turning up in unlikely places & they do not date from the time of the pharaohs! The Misfit Mob are soon involved in attempting to solve this mystery along with various personal crises and a great many physical injuries to poor Callum!

It took me a while to get into this book. Maybe it was due to how wacky the characters were, but at first I was inclined to dismiss it, but I persevered & I'm glad I did. Gradually this cast of misfits really endeared themselves to me. The plot itself was good and as usual I didn't solve the mystery but that's never really bothered me!

A fun book. Thanks Netgalley & the publisher for giving me a chance to meet & enjoy these great characters.

A Dark So Deadly by Stuart McBride

This is a cracking book to read don't be daunted by the 600 plus page count, it really didn't seem like a long read.

Although I was initially disappointed to realise that it wasn't the next instalment of the Logan McRae series but on saying that once I settled down to read it soon dawned on me that this is hopefully the start of a new detective series. As always with his novels there is the dark Scottish wit in the one liners.

DC Callum MacGregor is the typical downtrodden hapless detective whose been dumped in amongst Mothers Misfit Mob, a collection of officers who it's deemed easier to keep together rather than face the storm if they fired them. We have one dying from cancer, one in a wheelchair following an accident and one who doesn't like her personal space invaded, we follow their stories throughout this novel.

In the town of Oldcastle people are being abducted, murdered and dismembered, while the team are looking for body parts, MacGregor is given the task of finding out where the 'smoked' mummy that was found at a local dump site came from, which then soon turns into a full blown murder enquiry as more mummies are discovered with fillings from the NHS. MacGregor is beaten more than once and is involved in some outrageous driving, all this keeps the pages turning fast and furiously.

Read for an honest review thanks to Netgalley and HarperCollins

A DARK SO DEADLY Written by Stuart MacBride

2017; 608 Pages (Harper Collins)

Genre: Scotland, police procedural, mystery, suspense, thriller, humour, fiction

(I received an ARC from the NETGALLEY)

Rating: ★★★★1/2


DC Callum MacGregor has been moved into the Misfit Mob squad. That is where the POlice Scotland stick officers that have been tainted in some way. Callum is accused of compromising a crime scene. In fact, the real culprit is his pregnant girlfriend who needs the maternity leave pay. For the sake of his new family he takes the blame and now must be one of the Misfits. Being in the Misfit Mob means that you get the "no-where" cases, but Callum lands a big case. A body has been found mummified but it turns out it has close ties to a current case. Since the other divisions are busy Callum and his team must solve the case...and hopefully without any mistakes!

This novel did take me a bit to finish but that is only because of the length. I would stop to finish off other commitments but always came back when I had time. I love all the quirky realistic characters and the dark humour. I know this is a standalone novel but I do hope we see more of Callum, Franklin, Mother and the rest. The chemistry between the characters are great and I was either enthralled or chuckling. The ending, which I didn't see coming was mostly great as it tied all the loose ends together. I really liked this novel and highly recommend it if you like gritty and dark humour in your suspense.
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A Dark So Deadly is a standalone novel by the successful Scottish crime writer, Stuart MacBride. I suspect that it will prove to be the start of a new series. The basic premise is that there’s this department, unofficially titled The Misfit Mob, where disgraced police officers are dumped. They’re given crap cases and generally it’s hoped they’ll go away, perhaps resign through boredom and frustration. One day they happen across a murder and due to the rest of the force being overstretched they’re allowed to get on with it.

I’m a massive fan of Mick Herron’s Slow Horses series of spy novels. The premise is similar: a department of MI5 where disgraced intelligence officers are put out to fallow, given crap jobs in the hope they’ll go away. Herron’s novels are brilliant, so given that A Dark So Deadly had a similar premise, I thought I would give it a go. That said, I did have my doubts. Stuart MacBride is one of Scotland’s most successful crime writers and as such I know of his work. He generally writes serial killer thrillers and that’s a sub-genre I’m not a fan.

The first thing to say about this book is that the author can certainly write. That’s not a surprise, considering his pedigree, but he really can write very well. This is important because A Dark So Deadly is a long novel, coming in at a whopping 609 pages. This brings me to my first criticism, the novel is simply too long. I wonder if MacBride has reached that stage of his career that some successful novelist’s reach, where they can literally write what they want, where there’s no one at the publishing house anymore who can reign them in. Stephen King springs to mind as a good example of this. To my mind, some of King’s novels are far too long and reading them I’ve wondered whether earlier on in his career an editor might have trimmed the manuscript down, made it a better novel as a consequence. A Dark So Deadly is like that, the story could easily have been told in less words. In fact, a couple of times I almost put the book down. I didn’t because the writing is so good and MacBride always managed to pull me back in. Even so, I think it’s never good when a reader feels the narrative start to drag.

Despite the dark themes covered in the novel (more of this in a minute) MacBride injects a good dose of humour into the narrative. In fact, at points it’s almost a dark comedy. This again is reminiscent of the Mick Herron spy novels I referred to. As with the Herron novels, the humour in A Dark So Deadly helped me warm to MacBride’s Misfit Mob and the characters he draws are certainly memorable. I would like to say that I would like to spend time with the Misfit Mob again, that I look forward to the next novel in the series, but I can’t. That’s because of my second criticism.

I understand that I’m in a minority of crime fiction readers here, but I just can’t stand serial killer fiction. To my mind it’s just so tired, unimaginative and clichéd. It doesn’t help that having studied Criminology at university, and with various friends in the police, I know serial killers to be extremely rare. And those that do exist don’t generally kill people in the ludicrously fiendish ways that they do in film and books. In A Dark So Deadly the serial killer does just that, slaughtering his victims in a grisly way. While there have been a few serial killers like this – Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein - the majority have just dispatched their victims in not so dramatic a fashion. This insistence by writers of serial killer fiction to come up with ever more devilish a manner of dispatching their victims has always struck me as not a little prurient and exacerbates my dislike of these novels.

Of course, a valid criticism of this review might be that I knew what type of novel MacBride writes, that lots of people like it, that no one forced me to read A Dark So Deadly. And such criticism would be perfectly legitimate. In my defence, I wouldn’t have chosen to read the book had the premise of the Misfit Mob not sounded so intriguing. Basically, despite knowing that MacBride tends to write serial killer fiction, I was hoping for something different and was disappointed when that’s what I got. But just to be clear, I know many people reading this review won’t share these thoughts. In fact, it might be the case that someone reading this review will be attracted to the book, thinking that they like serial killer thrillers and thus why not give it a go. And I’m fine with that. It’s just personally, I would have preferred the author try something else.

So, in conclusion there’s lots to like about this book. It’s well written, it has a good touch of humour, the characters are well drawn. While what didn’t work for me – the length of the novel, the fact that it’s yet another serial killer thriller - may well be to other’s taste.

Callum uncovers links between his ancient corpse and three missing young men. O Division’s Major Investigation Teams already have more cases than they can cope with, so, against everyone’s better judgement, the Misfit Mob are just going to have to manage this one on their own.

No one expects them to succeed, but right now they’re the only thing standing between the killer’s victims and a slow, lingering death. The question is, can they prove everyone wrong before he strikes again?

I have absolutely loved Mr MacBride’s previous work, so I was keen to read this novel and see if a change of characters would be as impressive. And boy were they! The author has a dark, deadly sense of humour and it shines through in just about every page. But the other thing that shines through is the humanity in his characters. Yes, they are all oddballs in some way or another (and that includes the cast of secondary characters) but the situations they find themselves are always real and gritty. The plot twists and turns and is as intriguing as the characters. I can’t recommend his work highly enough. Go and read a book of his. Now!

Great book that kept me guessing to the end

Oh, it's so frustrating! I loved the start of this book, I loved the middle, I loved it all the way through - until the end!
This book made me laugh out loud. The dry sense of humour, the tedium of police/office work, the bickering colleagues - it was so refreshing that the characters were like average people, rather than the more polished, deep & brooding/aged & cantankerous DIs & sergeants in most police thrillers. I almost wished it wasn't a thriller & it was just a novel about Callum & his crappy life!
Slight spoilers from here...
But then it all just started getting silly. Characters were acting, well, out of character. Big reveals we're making me go 'eh?! He would never do that!' Rather than the more enjoyable 'oh I wasn't expecting that!' great twists. His brother turning out to he a celebrity who turns out to be performing just up the road...
Like I said, I wished it wasn't a thriller... What happen to Elaine & Powell?! Did Callum ever get cleared of cocking up the crime scene? Who was the 'Mary' that Watt lost? I know all this can be inferred, but it was this peripheral stuff I enjoyed much more than increasingly daft thriller plot line.
I do hope there's more stories about the Misfit Mob though! I'd definite read them!

I read the first chapter and unfortunately I am unclear of what was happening the whole time. Wanted it to be a good book...

A cop no one trusts, they think he took a bribe. A cop moved to the team for violence and two with health issues, they are the "Misfit Mob". DC Callum MacGregor is our main character, distrust is rife among his colleagues, rumored to have taken a bribe. Callum just wants a decent crack of the whip, when they get called to a dumped mummified corpse the team think this is another dead beat case. It slowly transpires there is a killer on the loose and the Misfit Mob must come together to solve it whilst trying to survive the force politics as well as their own person issues.

Oooooh I do hope this is the start of a new series and not just a one off standalone. The characters are flawed and very human in some of their questionable choices and damaged personalities. Poor Callum must be one of the most unlucky humans in the world! A sad childhood story, colleagues that don't trust him, a baby on the way and just when you think things can't get worse for him another strike of bad luck hits. As he struggles to juggle personal blows amidst a case that throws curve ball after curve ball you can't help but be drawn into the dark world MacBride has created.

We glimpse snippets of the killers world, the team interaction, the domestic side of DC MacGregor as well as the integration of the teams newest officer. If you have read MacBride before you can expect his usual humor and swearing from his Scottish characters. It is well paced and ties up earlier memories of MacGregors which initially I found a wee bit out of sync with the previous chapter however as the stories progresses it all takes shape perfectly. With twists and turns, swearing, violence, murder and mayhem this newest offering has all of MacBrides trademark writing but with fresh new characters and a chilling killer. 4/5 for me this time, thanks to Netgalley and HarperCollins for providing me with a review copy. A Dark So Deadly is out now to buy in hardback and e book.

I am an avid Stuart MacBride reader and love the Logan McRae series so I was really looking forward to reading this one. Unexpectedly I really struggled with this one and I failed to get engrossed like I usually do in his novels. I have read a lot of other reviews and it appears that I am in the minority, noting that there are lots of praise and admiration for this novel so I suggest you decide for yourself. I am a big enough of the author not to be put off by one disappointment and fully intend to read more of his work soon.
This stand alone novel features DC Callum MacGregor whose career was derailed when took the blame for his pregnant girlfriend after she compromised a crime scene. Callum is transferred to DI Flora Malcolmson’s team which is made up of misfits, other officers who have made mistakes and they are fed boring cases that no other officer wants. All sounds interesting but sorry it didn't work for me.
I would like to thank both Net Galley and HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction for supplying a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Long ago, as a young boy, he asked his parents to stop at the local rest stop so he could visit the bathroom. When he's doing his business, a sexual predator finds him and tries to take him. He escapes, but he can't find his family. The car and the caravan where there, but they were not. He hides in the caravan until the predator goes away. In the end, he goes into foster care...

Harper Collins and Net Galley let me read this book for review (thank you). It's been published so you can buy a copy now.

Callum had become a cop. He had no idea that the current case he was investigating would go all the way back to that day in his life when he was abandoned. He's also not popular at the cop shop because he covered for his girlfriend (another cop) and has been thrown in with a bunch of misfits. They might not be the usual cops but they do solve crimes.

This is a sad read. The further they go, the more bodies they find. They had a major suspect and he ran from them and drowned. There was evidence at his apartment. But Callum doesn't think that's the end of it. He thinks two people were involved.

He confirms this by accident and narrowly misses losing his life. The killer was totally unexpected and his motives were odd. His mind was unbalanced. I had no clue who the killer was until it was too late for Callum to escape. I would have been in the same trouble he was. An intelligent killer is hard to find but sometimes they're too smart for their own good. This one got overconfident.

It as was a good read if a bit depressing. All those people who died were chosen for their looks or sexual desire. They didn't deserve to die.

You read it and let me know if you figure out who the murderer is before you get to the climax. I sure didn't...

Gritty well thought out plot with characters who blend and are quickly known to you as you learn of their human traits and failings which for a story teller is an art in itself.
The plot twist and turns as the body count grows. Callum, the main character and his group of misfits gel as they investigate macabre murders which are related closely to Callum's past and also his own family. The plot is fast moving and the reader is left wondering where it will eventually end and who will still be standing but that makes a good tale and Stuart MacBride tells it well. Well worth reading and Stuart MacBride who was previously unknown to me (my thanks go to netgalley for introducing his work to me) is added to my list of good authors. Eddy Weatherill

It was a good thriller. My eyes were glued to the book.

Having avidly read and loved the Logan McRae series, it was with mixed feelings that I embarked on this new book from Stuart Macbride. Would it be as good as previous stories? Would the characters and plot live up to the high standards of the past? I need not have worried. Although initially hard to get into, and punctuated by slightly irritating 'excerpts' (which I did end up skipping) the new pool of idiosyncratic characters and the main unlikely protagonist made for a wonderful cast. The book was full of twists and turns. Just when you think you have it worked out, Macbride throws readers another curveball and the action moves off in new directions. Whether you enjoyed Logan McRae or are considering this author for the first time, I would definitely recommend this.

Another very good book from MacBride, this one introduces new characters to us from the Oldcastle Police Department.......Ash Henderson's stomping grounds......but except for a tiny mention (did you catch it?) Ash doesn't appear in this one. Callum McGregor is part of the "Misfit" mob, a group of wacky officers that no one else wants and they get the case when a couple of mummies are found. Lots of sub plots in this one and these characters were awesome ! The only negative that kept this from being a 5 star read for me was the ending came very quickly and seemed a little rushed. I even checked twice for an "Epilogue" chapter that I may have missed. But it's a small critique and I would read about this bunch again in a second.

Thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for a copy in exchange for an honest review.