His Bloody Project: A Historical Thriller

His Bloody Project: A Historical Thriller, written by Graeme Macrae Burnet, is a historical crime novel originally published in 2015. Presented as a series of fictionalized historical documents compiled by Burnet, the story concerns a gruesome triple homicide perpetrated by Roderick Macrae, a young farmer living in the Scottish Highland in the mid-19th century. Told through a number of often-contradictory perspectives, the novel deals with the nature of free will, the origins of criminal behavior, and social inequality. His Bloody Project has received several awards and, in 2016, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. This guide references the edition first printed by Arcade Publishing in 2017.

Plot Summary

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. 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. 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.

Following these statements is the longest section of the book, which is Roderick’s memoirs regarding his life leading up to the crimes. He briefly describes his family life and his close relationship with his older sister Jetta. 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. 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. Roderick feels he has no choice to put the sheep out of its misery, and he kills it with a peat iron. 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. However, Lachlan is unhappy with the decision and becomes frustrated when the constable refuses to leverage further punishment against Roderick.

Soon thereafter, Lachlan Mackenzie runs to replace the current constable in an election. 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. Meanwhile, Roderick strikes up a friendship with Lachlan’s daughter, Flora, and makes romantic advances on her that she refuses. At the same time, Jetta becomes pregnant with Lachlan Mackenzie’s child and endeavors to hide her condition from her family. Roderick’s father, John, has a disastrous meeting with the official in charge of overseeing their township on behalf of the Crown, in which he tries and fails to explain the unfair treatment Lachlan Mackenzie has inflicted upon the Macrae family.

On the day of an annual summer festival, Roderick accompanies Jetta into the town of Applecross, where she hopes to sell some homemade wares. There, he runs into an acquaintance named Archibald Ross, a loquacious boy of Roderick’s age. The two drink heavily, and Roderick confesses his feelings toward Flora to Archibald, who encourages him to express himself to her. They meet Flora, and Roderick drunkenly confesses to Flora, who slaps him on the face and runs away. Later, Roderick and Archibald continue drinking at a nearby pub before being interrupted by Lachlan Mackenzie, who teases Roderick. Roderick attempts to strike Lachlan, who beats the boy senseless.

Roderick awakes in a ditch the next day and walks home. Over the next several days he fantasizes about running away from Culduie and one day sets out to leave for good, only to return in a fit of remorse at the thought of leaving Jetta behind. That evening he learns that his family is being evicted from their home. John becomes enraged with Jetta for her pregnancy, beating her savagely and demanding to know who the father is. He lets up after Roderick confesses that the father is Lachlan Mackenzie, and Jetta flees to the family barn, where Roderick attempts to comfort her.

The next day, spurned by Jetta’s confession that she received a vision of Lachlan Mackenzie’s death, Roderick sets out toward Lachlan’s home with the intention of killing him. He finds Flora peeling potatoes and kills her before she can flee. He waits for Lachlan to arrive home but is interrupted by Lachlan’s toddler-aged son Donnie, who Roderick strikes on the side of the head, killing the child. Finally, Lachlan arrives home and discovers his children dead. Roderick, who has been hiding, reveals himself, and the two fight. Roderick eventually gains the upper hand and kills Lachlan Mackenzie, and ends his account by noting that he decided not to kill Lachlan’s senile mother, who witnessed all three of Roderick’s killings.

The memoir is followed by three brief medical reports regarding the bodies of Donnie, Flora, and Lachlan. While the findings of those reports mostly corroborate Roderick’s account of the killings, they reveal that Flora received a number of wounds to her pubic area, which aren’t accounted for in Roderick’s telling. These reports are followed by a section from the memoirs of J. Bruce Thomson, a criminologist who examined Roderick at the behest of Roderick’s legal counsel, Andrew Sinclair. Thomson is unimpressed by Roderick but arranges to travel to Culduie with Sinclair to learn about his community and family environment. There, he speaks with one of Roderick’s neighbors, Carmina Murchison, who reveals that her husband sometimes observed Roderick pleasuring himself outside the window leading to her daughters’ room. Thomson attempts to speak with John Macrae, who is reticent to offer his opinion about much of anything, and is similarly stonewalled by Lachlan’s widow.

The next section is a condensed account of Roderick’s trial. Burnet notes that the case became infamous before the trial commenced, resulting in a packed courtroom and a great deal of press attention. On the first day, Roderick enters a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. The Crown calls several witnesses who knew Roderick to testify to his behavior and the circumstances around the murders, attempting to illustrate them as an act of revenge that Roderick carried out because of the humiliations his family suffered under Lachlan’s abuse of authority. Meanwhile, Sinclair attempts to elicit statements that paint Roderick as unwell, strange, or outright mad. This continues over three days, culminating in the defense calling its only witness: J. Bruce Thomson. Sinclair expects Thomson to argue that Roderick suffers from so-called moral insanity, which renders an individual in possession of their intellect but skews their sense of right and wrong. Thomson shocks Sinclair, and the courtroom, by proposing that Roderick is perfectly sane and that his primary target was Flora. As evidence, he cites Roderick’s hesitancy to address Flora’s sexual wounds even as he took responsibility for the rest of his crimes.

After closing statements, the jury deliberates for less than 24 hours before returning guilty verdicts on all three counts of murder. In an epilogue, Burnet describes how Sinclair sought to build a popular movement on Roderick’s behalf to seek an appeal by publishing Roderick’s account. This effort fails, and Roderick is hung for his crimes.