Book Log 2020 #13: His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet

I apparently had a thing going for fiction presenting as fact in 2020. In this example, we are presented with "found" documents relating to a 1869 triple murder in a Scottish village. There's no question that the killer is local teen Roderick Macrae. The real question is why he did it - did Roderick kill to take revenge against the constable that made his life a living hell, or did he have some sort of mental or moral defect that led him down the path to murder?

The documents provide various views of the motives for the crime, most notably the narrative penned by Roderick himself.  They also tell the story in a unique way, once that provides plenty of room for different interpretations of motive, as well as room for doubt as to the veracity of the narrators. It's also notable that the time the novel is set in is not that long after the development of the M'Naghten rule, a jury instruction developed in cases where an insantiy defense is given. This tension between crime as a moral failing or a sympton of illness adds to the conflict at the heart of the book.

This was short listed for the Booker Prize (it lost to Paul Beatty's The Sellout), and is apparently the best-selling book to be shortlisted (though I wonder if it was passed by The Testaments). It's easy to see why it became so popular, between the gripping murder story and the thorough depiction of grinding poverty in rural Scotland. Very much worth reading for fans of crime fiction or even true crime.