Martyn Pig
Martyn Pig is a thriller by the English author Kevin Brooks , which was released on April 1, 2002 and is aimed primarily at young people. The book won various literary prizes, including the 2003 Branford Boase Award .
structure
The novel is divided into nine chapters, seven of which describe the full week (the week before Christmas) that Martyn experiences, from Wednesday to Tuesday. Christmas Day follows as a subsequent chapter and finally the epilogue, which is still intensely involved in the resolution of the plot. It is written from the first person perspective.
Summary of contents
The action starts a week before Christmas. 14-year-old Martyn Pig lives alone with his father, a heavy alcoholic named William Pig. His father is killed in a domestic accident, but Martyn does not call the police or 911, as he thinks he is suspected of murder. Instead, he confesses the incident to his friend Alex, who tries to get him to call the police, which Martyn refuses. It becomes clear that shortly before his death , the father inherited £ 30,000 , which Martyn would only get if he could maintain the appearance that his father was still alive. So the two of them remove the body in a gravel pit. However, Alex finally cheats on him and disappears with her mother to America. The death is solved and Martyn is interrogated intensively, but in the end he gets away with it. He spent his youth in the care of his aunt Jean, who now looks after him.
Chapter overview
Wednesday
At the beginning of the story, the reader learns a lot about Martyn, his unusual name and numerous philosophical topics Martyn thinks through, including his inferiority complexes . The real action begins when his drunk father sends him out to buy the groceries he needs for Christmas dinner. At the bus stop he meets his girlfriend Alex, who is also waiting for the bus. Later he had an argument with his drunk father while watching TV at home. This provokes Martyn, so that Martyn yells angrily at him. Then the father jumps up and wants to beat Martyn, but misses his target and hits his forehead against the stone mantelpiece, he goes dead to the ground. Martyn remains perplexed and does not call for help. Later Alex rings the doorbell and during the conversation Martyn tells about the accident and shows Alex his dead father. Horrified, she tries to persuade Martyn to call the police, but he refuses, as he fears he is suspected of murder. You decide to reassess the situation the next day.
Thursday to Tuesday
The next day, Martyn rummaged through his father's private drawers and found a letter from a lawyer telling his father that he had inherited £ 30,000 from an aunt. His father had never mentioned this letter to him before and, completely surprised, he ponders how he can get the money. But this is only possible if he can maintain the appearance that his father is still alive. Alex visits him again and they come up with a plan to get the money. First they want to make the body disappear in a flooded gravel pit. To do this, they want to move the corpse away together. Alex can "borrow" her mother's van and thus manage the transport. Then they want to withdraw £ 250 from the bank each day, which is not a problem since the father had noted his PIN on the card. Alex leaves Martyn and they want to start the next day. However, Alex shows up again with her boyfriend Dean. He hid a microphone in Alex's backpack and learned everything about the death of his father and the money. Now he is blackmailing Martyn, who should get the money and give it to him, otherwise he would inform the police. Alex is completely broken up, Martyn has to try to withdraw the money within a week. The body is still in the house. Since Martyn's aunt Jean, William Pig's sister, has announced that she will come to check the housekeeping of the negligent father, Martyn and Alex have to try to "breathe life" back into the corpse using make-up techniques and a few tricks. So the body is prepared and prepared in bed, it gives the impression that the father has had a bad cold. In addition, they record the breathing sound of a sick person on tape and play it back so that the aunt thinks that the father is breathing hard. Because of the bad light and the good preparation, the aunt does not notice death and she believes the father is still alive. After some back and forth, the aunt leaves again. Now Alex and Martyn want to dispose of the body in a gravel pit. To do this, they stow the corpse in a sleeping bag and put it in Alex's mother's van in the evening. At night the two drive through the forest to the flooded gravel pit, which is not easy due to the heavy snowfall so shortly before Christmas. Finally they weigh down the sleeping bag with stones and submerge it in the water, it disappears without a trace. They then return unnoticed after the body has been removed. The next day, Martyn rests from the exertions of the last few days and discusses the procedure for the next few days with Alex. H. how they want to get the money and how to deal with the blackmail by Dean. Martyn is supposed to distract Dean, while Alex is supposed to look for the tapes with the incriminating material in Dean's apartment and take them with him. Dean seeks out Martyn and demands the inheritance money. Martyn, who is at home alone, calmly explains that he did not have the money and that he had changed the evidence so that Dean would be mistaken for the murderer: he put Dean's hair and cigarette butts in the sleeping bag and sank them along with the corpse. An examination of the corpse would certainly convince Dean as the perpetrator. At the same time, Alex uses a duplicate key to steal the incriminating tapes from his apartment, thus destroying any evidence that could incriminate Martyn and Alex. Dean is horrified and leaves the property again on his motorcycle . Dean's plan didn't work out and Martyn and Alex can continue their own plan. Later Alex comes to Martyn, they both destroy the tapes together and Alex has to go to the bathroom for a moment because her hands are smeared. It later emerges that this is brake fluid and Alex wipes it off on towels that remain in Martyn's bathroom. Alex doesn't show up at Martyn's as agreed and later the police come to Martyn and want to talk to him. He is shocked to find out that Dean is dead. He died the day before in an accident with his motorcycle because his brake lines were sabotaged. The policemen discover the oil-smeared towels in the bathroom and take Martyn with them to the police station, as he is now under suspicion. Martyn slowly realizes that he was betrayed by Alex, who sabotaged the brake lines and killed Dean in such a way that as a witness he might have incriminated her later. Then she and her mother in disguise withdrew the money from the bank and left the country. It was possible because Alex had secretly stolen Martyn's bank card. Martyn has to stay on guard, later he learns from the police that his father was found dead in the pit. Martyn plays the surprised and feigns horror so that he is not suspected. The police found the body after an anonymous tip, presumably from Alex, who is now on her way to the USA .
Christmas Day
During the following days, Martyn was interrogated several times, and finally he was taken care of by his aunt Jean. The investigations are also discontinued after some time, as there is no solid evidence. Dean is dead and Aunt Jean relieves Martyn, believing that she saw the father alive in bed. Ultimately, it ends well for Martyn and he gets away with it without penalty.
epilogue
During the time Martyn was living with his aunt, he received a letter from Alex who, together with her mother, with the help of the money, had laid the foundation for a new life in the USA and has since started a promising acting career. In the letter, she alludes to Martyn's philosophical interpretation of "good" and "bad", which states that something is only "bad" if you believe it to be, no matter what outsiders think. She writes that she can finally understand this theory after all that has happened. It remains unclear whether Martyn and Alex will continue to be in contact after the letter arrives.
expenditure
English:
- Martyn Pig, English edition, 2007, ISBN 0439507529
German:
- Martyn Pig, 2004, ISBN 3423708662