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The Blade Artist

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The Blade Artist

By: Irvine Welsh
Narrated by: Tam Dean Burn Burn
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About this listen

Jim Francis has finally found the perfect life – and is now unrecognisable, even to himself. A successful painter and sculptor, he lives quietly with his wife, Melanie, and their two young daughters, in an affluent beach town in California. Some say he’s a fake and a con man, while others see him as a genuine visionary.

But Francis has a very dark past, with another identity and a very different set of values. When he crosses the Atlantic to his native Scotland, for the funeral of a murdered son he barely knew, his old Edinburgh community expects him to take bloody revenge. But as he confronts his previous life, all those friends and enemies – and, most alarmingly, his former self – Francis seems to have other ideas.

When Melanie discovers something gruesome in California, which indicates that her husband’s violent past might also be his psychotic present, things start to go very bad, very quickly.

The Blade Artist is an elegant, electrifying novel – ultra violent but curiously redemptive – and it marks the return of one of modern fiction’s most infamous, terrifying characters, the incendiary Francis Begbie from Trainspotting.

 City Life Family Life Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Thriller & Suspense Urban World Literature Marriage Fiction Scotland Suspense Exciting

Critic Reviews

Back to his violent best… Dark, gruesome and captivating. (Sam Parker)
It’s a thriller in the mode of Tarantino making war films or westerns; hiding grand themes within genre. (Alan Bett)
Intense, electrifying… Welsh has delivered a tremendously entertaining book – a whodunit, a thriller, and a probing character study – that’s obsessed with conflict, both physical and mental… A surprisingly poignant, evocative read – highly recommended.
In a year when filming begins on Danny Boyle’s sequel of sorts to Trainspotting, it seems perfect timing to revisit its most visceral force.
[Begbie’s] intelligence and instinct make him compelling, and Welsh keep the plot roaring along… This is a dark, guilty pleasure and written with – it seems to me – the cinema screen in mind. (Kate Muir)
Welsh's ear for dialect is superb, and the opportunity to observe Edinburgh's dark underbelly from the perspective of someone used to a gentler lifestyle far away leads to shrewd cultural insights.
While Welsh’s sense of humour is never far from the surface of his writings…this is very much a work of dark crime fiction rather than comedy or social satire with a touch of James Ellroy. (Hannah McGill)
The Blade Artist is lean...clever and propulsive. The shorter length concentrates Welsh’s energy… There is a reason people still read him. (Orlando Bird)
No one writes about violence and class with such wit and insight as Welsh. He’s a social satirist of the highest order and, with its themes of vengeance and redemption, this is a deceptively comic book with a very dark heart.
Welsh may be a reformed character but he's still got it, and The Blade Artist is fab. (Katy Guest)
All stars
Most relevant
Loved it all, the story, the narration.... Frank Begbie is s classic. Worth your time!

Brilliant!

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A little slow to begin but as usual Welsh delivers again and again. Well worth the time.

excellence

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A very gritty book, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Language is very rough, but that's life.
It is the first of the series I have read, but the characters are well developed and I felt they stood alone nicely within this book.
I will read more by this author.

Not for the faint of heart

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i Liked how the narrator changed accents and tone between characters, great sequel to T1 and T2 brilliant!

Great narration, fantastic story around Begbie

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Once again a Welsh book is not only read by Tam Dean Burn but explained by him. I was moved to picture the scenes on the beach in California and could feel the slick on the street in a cold Leith. I expected a lot from a standalone book (relatively) about Welsh's most disturbed and fearsome character, but was not at all disappointed.

Excellent

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