Abstrakt
Graeme Macrae Burnet's second novel, His Bloody Project (2015), can, in terms of genre, be characterised as a historical crime novel with elements of a psychological thriller. What distinguishes it from other similarly focused historical fiction is its narrative and compositional structure as a dossier of allegedly authentic documents related to the case of a triple murder committed by a seventeen-year-old Highland crofter, Roderick Macrae, which lacks any authorial narrative voice.
These documents are produced either by persons directly involved in the case or record the process of the investigation, interrogation and trial. Burnet's novel consists chiefly of the culprit's memoir-like testimony in which he recounts the events prior to the murders and describes the actual killings, and transcripts of interrogations of the witnesses and experts during the trial.
These are supplemented with medical reports and a criminal anthropologist's travelogue-like account of his visit to the village the murderer comes from and the interviews he conducted with some of the local people. This paper explores the particularities and effects of such a composition of a historical narrative, and also places it within the British literary tradition.