A review by tartancrusader
Bedlam by Christopher Brookmyre
4.0
Almost all I will say about this, save that I loved it, was that one passage triggered (from Stygian depths of memory) the release of a cheat code - a 7-digit number - for a computer game which I had not even *thought* about (much less played) for 25 years.
The cover blurb just doesn't do it justice - for me, this book was as much about nostalgia as it was about plot. The nostalgia wasn't as thickly-layered, nor as all-pervasive as Ernest Cline's almost-equally worthy "Ready Player One" but, for me anyway, this was all the better for that. Also, and here's what got me - this was smarter, the puzzle better, the resolution neater. Don't get me wrong, I liked Cline's book. But I liked this more.
The cover blurb just doesn't do it justice - for me, this book was as much about nostalgia as it was about plot. The nostalgia wasn't as thickly-layered, nor as all-pervasive as Ernest Cline's almost-equally worthy "Ready Player One" but, for me anyway, this was all the better for that. Also, and here's what got me - this was smarter, the puzzle better, the resolution neater. Don't get me wrong, I liked Cline's book. But I liked this more.