Graeme Macrae Burnet - His Bloody Project: Documents relating to the case of Roderick Macrae

His Bloody Project tells the story of a horrific murder in 19th century rural Scotland. It purports to tell a true story based on found documents and archives. While these aren't real, they have been meticulously constructed by Graeme Macrae Burnet and, having read a number of histories of the crofting communities they certainly feel genuine.

The first substantial document is the account of the murderer himself. Supposedly written by Roderick Macrae in his prison cell before the trial, it is a story of his family's life in the small village of Culduie. The village is remote from the big cities and immersed in traditional practices and social relations. Superficially it is more feudal than anything else, Macrae's family use their land on sufferance from the landowner, and mediated through the control of the local authority figure - the constable Lachlan Broad. While Roddy's account is not necessarily truthful, it is shot through with the slights and abuses that these social relations engender. Roddies' father is abused and put upon by the all powerful constable. Following the death of Roddy's mother, their land is reduced and other attacks - such as refusing to allow the family to gather seaweed without permission are symbols of oppression - and Broad's personal victimisation.

Roddy's account is also a coming of age story - as he enters adolescene he is learning about the wider world, relations and sex. Broad is having sex with Roddy's sister, and clearly its a coercive relationship. Roddy's father steadfastly ignores this violence.

Roddy tells all this matter of factly, including the story of how he falls for, and then is rejected by Broad's own daughter. But he then also tells the story of how he murders Broad, and his two children, including the girl who rejected him in order to stop the oppression of his family. Its violent, unpleasant and Roddy is unrepentent. The reader will be torn between the satisfaction of the violent settling of debts with Broad, and simulatneously horrified by the wider killing.

But. Is Roddy telling the reader everything? The documents that follow cast a different light on the story, and Roddy's motivations. The transcript of the trial details the prosecutions desire to portray Roddy as a violent criminal, and the defenses' attempt to paint him as mentally distressed at the time of the killing - distress caused by the oppression and the shock at his mother's death.

Mixed in with this are other stories, including the pompous and unpleasant account of the doctor sent to study Roddy, and the village, in order to better prepare a defence. The doctor, immersed in the latest anthropological studies, sees savagery, stupidity and ignorance everywhere, except among the wealthy and the landowners. Similarly the media reporting of the trial sees the anger by Roddy's family and the wider community at losing land as due to their fondness for outdated and inefficient farming - rather than the despair at the threat to their livelihoods.

Burnet has done a magnificent job of using the "documents" to tell both a story and make a comment on the horrors and difficulties of croft life in a rigid and violent class society. I was pleased, but not surprised, to see that the books he used as source material included works by the wonderful historian James Hunter who has documented similar cases in his own work. 

Ultimately however, this is a novel about truth. Who is telling the truth? What are the real facts? Was Roddy right to kill Broad? Or was he actually commiting a different crime? And can someone take the law into their hands when the law is clearly geared towards protecting the wealthy and powerful. A very good, if painful read.