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Christopher Brookmyre
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Bedlam Paperback – July 15, 2013

by Christopher Brookmyre (Author)
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 673 ratings
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This is a Thriller, Crime & Mystery. Stuck in an endless state of war and chaos where the pain and fear feels real and from which not even death can offer an escape. Prison or playground. Heaven or hell. This is where you find out. This is white-knuckle action, sprawling adventure, merciless satire and outrageous humour like you've never experienced. This is Bedlam.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    384 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Hachette Books
  4. Publication date
    July 15, 2013
  5. Dimensions
    6.14 x 1.1 x 9.09 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1408704072
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1408704073
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

It's the busload of teenagers who steal the show in a series of quite brilliant and very funny scenes . . . Very well-written, intelligent and daring―Daily Mail, for PANDAEMONIUM

About the Author

Chris Brookmyre was a journalist before becoming a full time novelist with the publication of QUITE UGLY ONE MORNING. Since the publication of A BIG BOY DID IT AND RAN AWAY he and his family decided to move away from Aberdeen and now live near Glasgow. Oh, yes.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hachette Books (July 15, 2013)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1408704072
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1408704073
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.1 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.14 x 1.1 x 9.09 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 673 ratings

About the author

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Christopher Brookmyre

Christopher Brookmyre

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Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5
673 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

S. Anderson
5.0 out of 5 stars Could be Brookmyre's best book yet
Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2013
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Bedlam is one of my favourite books by Christopher Brookmyre. This might be partly because I work as a programmer, and I do think I enjoyed the book more because I have a background of IT work and '90s first person shooters, but you don't need that background to understand and enjoy the story. As long as you're aware that computer games are a thing, you'll be fine.

The protagonist is likeable, relatable, and believable, and the other characters are also well written. Bedlam has all the great action sequences and hilarity you expect from a Brookmyre novel, and in my view the plot is well written. I could see what the twist at the end was likely to be, but it still kept me guessing because I wanted to know how the situation would be resolved. There's a lot of things to think about with this book, and it raises some ethical questions that are interesting and becoming steadily more relevant as technology advances.
3 people found this helpful
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Layman
4.0 out of 5 stars game boy meets Sci fi
Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2014
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Fast moving story for gaming geeks. It takes you into a game, literally. For those of you that plays games into the night, this can happen to you.
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Martin
3.0 out of 5 stars A change of genre
Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2013
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Cards on the table, I am a big Christopher Brookmyre fan. So much so, that I'd pretty much say if it's got his name on the front, I'd go ahead and get the book without reading the blurb, safe in the knowledge that it would be right up my street.
Unfortunately, this policy caught me out a little with this shift in genre into sci-fi, and I was a little disappointed - not being much of a sci-fi nut, or a games geek at all - when I realised what I'd got myself into.
That said, it displays the usual Brookmyre style of being well crafted with a light humour and an intricate plot itching to be unravelled. So if you are into Brookmyre AND sci-fi - you'll be in heaven, or some equivalent idyllic digital nanosphere with Bedlam.
So for my star rating, it would probably score at least a 4 if that were my bag.
However, I'm guessing that if anyone is likely to find this review useful, it will be those, like me, who like Brookmyre's crime stuff and might otherwise leap into this book expecting more of the same. So I'm going to dip down to a 3-star rating just to represent the warning about knowing what you're getting into.
I never read any Iain M Banks books, but enjoyed a lot by Iain Banks without the M - it was very thoughtful of him to flag up to his readers which genre they'd be getting by use of that middle initial. I see Christopher is becoming Chris for his next release, so wonder if Brookmyre is going to go down the same route. That would be a welcome move, in my book - and I am looking forward to his 'return to crime', which I expect would warrant an extra star or two in my review.
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Jean L.
5.0 out of 5 stars Very funny book with a great plot and an interesting moral ...
Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2015
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Very funny book with a great plot and an interesting moral dilemma. Has flashbacks and flashforwards that can be a little confusing, but really make the story deeper. Don't read the blurb before you read, as it spoiled the first few chapters for me. Definitely uses curse words, but no sex scenes so you decide if it's age appropriate. A great read and I'm looking forward to reading more of this author's work!
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FlickBishop
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2017
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Awesome
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Item as promised - thanks!
Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2019
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Item as promised - thanks!
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Amazon Customer
2.0 out of 5 stars Not the Christopher Brookmyre style I expected
Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2013
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In this book, it seems Christopher Brookmyre has forgotten the audience and written to indulge himself. I loved all his earlier novels and this one was a huge disappointment.
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Sean the Bookonaut
4.0 out of 5 stars More a sci-fi mystery than a technothriller
Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2013
In Bedlam we see Brookmyre diverge from his usual fare of Scottish crime novels and venture into science fiction. That being said, Bedlam is still at its heart mystery fiction, with our hapless protagonist required to unravel who he is, where he is and how to take down the bad guys.

Ross Baker is computer scientist working for a shady American firm in the charming surrounds of industrial Stirling. He works hard but never seems to get ahead, he thinks his girlfriend is about to leave him and the office psychopath has just screwed him over again when he decides to help one of his colleagues, Solderburn, who is working on side project.

He consents to be scanned by Solderburn's new cobbled together scanner and wakes up inside a 1990's first person shooter called Starfire. From this point on he's on his own and has to figure out where he is, if he's still Ross Baker and how to get home.

It's not a new idea, being transported into a video game, but Brookmyre has reworked the idea and given us a story that will be a trip down nostalgia lane for anyone who grew up gaming from the late 80's onward combined with some techno thriller trappings. There's some good in-jokes and some not so subtle social commentary - Brookmyre did win a laugh from me with a reference to Daily Mail readers.

I did, however, find it a bit slow going until the last quarter of the book where the pace picked up and both the reader and Ross had a better picture of where things were going. There's also an info dump at the end of the book which is an info dump in both the literal and narrative sense. Ross gets injected with updated information on what's going on in the outside world bringing he and the reader up to date. It felt like Brookmyre was glossing over what might have been good techno-thriller material but I don't know that I can suggest another way to have worked the information into the story without revealing some of the mystery.

If you are looking for a mystery novel with a difference, if you enjoy Brookmyre's humour and you're a fan of gaming you'll enjoy Bedlam, as for the techno thiller aspects, it just doesn't move fast enough for me.
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Top reviews from other countries

Mudzie
5.0 out of 5 stars An absolute favorite for gamers!
Reviewed in Germany on January 31, 2019
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For a gamer, this book is amazing! And if you're into questions about consciousness and how the human mind works, then you're in for a stimulating adventure, that will keep you on the edge of your seat, and mind-blowing jaw-dropping revelations the further you go into the story. Very well written. I can say for sure it's one of my absolute favorite reads.
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The Supreme Stick
4.0 out of 5 stars Not what I expected. However, ...
Reviewed in Australia on September 25, 2020
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I was looking for classic Brookmyre and most certainly NOT SciFi, which I hate. However, it was enticingly well-written and may have altered my perceptions.
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Mr. S. G. Perkins
5.0 out of 5 stars BEDLAM
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 3, 2013
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BEDLAM

Ross Baker is a geek. A downtrodden computer programmer and systems architect at a software company called Neurosphere, where they are experimenting with ways to digitise consciousness.
On a rough day at work (after a presentation he has spent the weekend working on has been cancelled, and after he finds out that his disgruntled girlfriend, Carol, is pregnant a fact he discovers via her sister telling some friends at the coffee machine at work) he volunteers for a brain scan in the R&D department of the company at which he works in Stirling, Scotland. run by a maverick, ex-hippy called Jay Solomon - also known affectionately as "Solderburn".
All is very relaxing, until he opens his eyes at the end of the scan to find himself, not in the comforting surroundings of the R&D lab in which he closed them a little while before, but in a building, on what appears to be a different planet ... which is currently being invaded, looking like some kind of Borg soldier, and with not a clue how he ended up there, or got to look like he does.
To make matters worse, the first person/thing he meets - a Lieutenant Kamno (a superior officer) he accidently kills in a saluting accident of sublime comic weirdness, just as another squad of soldiers is approaching.
He meets up with an accountant, Bob, who also seems to be from the real world (something Ross calls the Meatverse) whose last memory before waking up in the game is going to sleep in his bed.
Most of the other individuals inhabiting this world are also NPCs from the game. Apart from a few Players, referred to by the other NPCs as Card Carriers.
Thus begins Ross's adventures, as he tries to find his way back to the real world, through a myriad of interlinked Gameworlds, ranging from Jet Set Willy through all sorts of FPS game worlds. Including a wonderfully satirical Daily Mail Headline generator app.
Running alongside the above is the story of Ross Baker, many years in the future, where he is the head geek of A massively successful Neurosphere. Still working under the heavy hand of his old boss from Stirling, an oily American, corporate sleazebag, called Zac Michaels.
The reason for Neurosphere's meteoric rise is an application called Memento Mori, whereby people's consciousnesses are copied so faithfully (beyond memories and emotions, down even to the WAY they think) that after their deaths, loved ones can interact with them in a virtual environment, and the DCs are indistinguishable from the real people.
This technology has interesting implications for the validity of Digital Consciousness, and raises the questions of rights for these consciousnesses. Which the book highlights, much as Philip K Dick did with the Mood Organs & Replicants, in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Though Bedlam has a much lighter tone, reflecting all of Brookmyre's writing. Though, until he caved in to popular demand and wrote this volume of speculative fiction, he has written pretty much exclusively darkly satirical crime & adventure novels.

So, despite being an entertaining, enjoyable and exciting read, Bedlam raises some very interesting and challenging moral and ethical issues, along with some interesting religious ones about the validity and definition of the soul, that we as a society are going to face and have to answer at some point in the probably not too distant future.
An entertaining & thought-provoking read, I thoroughly recommend Bedlam to anyone

For a more in-depth review, visit my my blog. ''The no Twilight Zone'', here [...]
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Dianne Strickland
3.0 out of 5 stars Played Video Games?
Reviewed in Canada on May 14, 2013
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If you answer yes, you will probably love this. Brookmyre is savagely funny, articulate and obviously knows a lot about video games.
I have never played one so this was really lost on me.
I've read every one of his books, adored some, thought others were completely off the rails. His earliest ones were my favourites. Least favourite was the one about religion.
I have a few techie friends; I am going to pass Bedlam on to them.
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Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars A pleasure. Thank you
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 31, 2014
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Bedlam has a slightly rocky start, which may have put some readers off. The short blurb on amazon is surprisingly all-encompassing, but if you misunderstood it or don't know computer gaming well enough to decode some fairly heavy clues, it takes a few pages before the setting is explained clearly.

Bedlam is a loosely cyberpunk science fiction adventure, and above all else it's a nerd bonanza packed with geek culture references. If you don't think you'll get the joke, prepare to be confused and disappointed.

As a long-time Christopher Brookmyre reader, for the first few pages I did think it might be an early "trunk novel" exhumed to throw a bone to readers unhappy with the recent Jasmine Sharp series. As with a slightly more landmark English science fiction creation, though, after a while the style settles down a bit.

Once it gets into its stride, Bedlam is like a letter from a friend you haven't seen for a while. All the things you remember you liked are still there. Shared interests, points of reference, sense of humour.

It benefits from the hugely flexible markers around the land of science fiction. It's not pure quill hard sf, or social commentary beyond the expected little bit'o'politics. It's a slick, well-written, action adventure on rails. The ending may not be totally satisfying, but that's not so different from a lot of end of level bosses. Sometimes it is more about the journey than the destination.

After the self-pubbed borderline science fiction and thriller kindle books I've read in the past month, anyway, Bedlam was fresh air to a suffocating man. You don't have to be Shakespeare, guys, you just need to do it like this.

I'm one of the constituency of constant readers disappointed by the first Jasmine Sharp book. This really felt like payback to the fans. Now I don't feel quite so much like part of the old gang being ignored in favour of cooler, hipper friends, maybe I'll give the series a second chance.
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