Author(s): Christopher Brookmyre

Fiction

For investigative journalist Jack Parlabane, these are worrying times: it's been almost three years since anyone tried to kill him and he fears he's losing his touch. But then comes an assignment in the Scottish countryside that will more than make up for lost time . . . Ultimate Motivational Leisure offers the latest in corporate outward bounds courses, the sort of team-building exercises that Jack thinks are decidedly for bankers. The organisers, however, are keen to overturn his prejudices, while Jack is happy to have them reinforced. If nothing else, he gets a free weekend of shooting at PR people with a paintball gun. Except the longer the weekend goes on, the weirder things start to get. First someone steals the SIM cards from everybody's mobile phones. Then, when the group accidentally strays on to army land, the army starts firing back - and not with cans of Dulux. Suddenly no one can tell what's real and what isn't, whether this is part of the game, or if everybody is fighting for their lives . . .