I have mainly enjoyed Brookmyre's work over the years. His early works usually went way over the top, but there was always humour, some great dialogue and some memorable characters. "When the Devil drives" is his second novel as "Chris" Brookmyre and he appears to be trying to lose all traces of his past. As a result, he underplays everything, there is no humour, there is desperately stilted dialogue and the characters are completely forgettable. I would have read an early Brookmyre in one sitting. This one took me a full week, and every time I picked up the book, I had genuinely forgotten who the characters were. Not a single one of them leaps off the page and I have terrible difficulty trying to visualise his mousy little heroine, Jasmine. The plot is all over the place. There is one interesting little twist, which is more Agatha Christie than Brookmyre, but,other than that, the book is absolutely forgettable. I do hope his publishers encourage him to return to the old style that made him such a vivid and imaginative writer.