His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet

Meanwhile, Roderick strikes up a friendship with Lachlan’s daughter, Flora, and makes romantic advances on her that she refuses. He wins after running effectively unopposed and begins waging a harassment campaign against the Macrae family-reducing the size of their lot, refusing to allow them to gather fertilizer from the sea, and forcing Jetta to have sex with him. Soon thereafter, Lachlan Mackenzie runs to replace the current constable in an election. However, Lachlan is unhappy with the decision and becomes frustrated when the constable refuses to leverage further punishment against Roderick. In an arbitration meeting following this incident, the town constable determines that Roderick’s family must pay 35 shillings-at the rate of one a week-to Lachlan Mackenzie to make up for the sheep’s loss. Roderick feels he has no choice to put the sheep out of its misery, and he kills it with a peat iron.

Shortly after her death, he is charged with watching the community’s sheep but becomes distracted, and a sheep belonging to Lachlan Mackenzie gets injured. His mother died in childbirth a year and a half before his crimes, and he places her death as the first chain in the sequence of events leading the murders he committed. He briefly describes his family life and his close relationship with his older sister Jetta.

In these statements, various individuals who knew Roderick present contradictory characterizations of the boy, and while some insist he was perfectly normal, or even of exceptional intelligence, others characterize him as wicked or out of his mind.įollowing these statements is the longest section of the book, which is Roderick’s memoirs regarding his life leading up to the crimes. This is followed by a series of witness statements given to the police following Roderick’s murder of fellow villager Lachlan “Broad” Mackenzie and his two children, Flora and Donnie. The novel begins with a Preface, in which a fictionalized version of the author introduces the book to come by presenting it as a series of documents concerning the case of Roderick Macrae, a young Scottish farmer living in the small Highland village of Culduie who committed a triple murder in the mid-19th century.

His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet