Rankin is working at full chaos in Necrophenia, throwing anything and everything at the wall and using it whether it sticks or not. It's a bit overwhelming, and maddening, and it must be said that Rankin does get on one's nerves occasionally. But there's a lot of insane creativity on display, and as unbridled as Rankin gets, at least he's not boring.

It's all well and good to appreciate your fans, but Necrophenia is almost too insular, punishing the reader for being unfamiliar. It does work on its own, but an appreciation of Rankin's previous work (particularly the eight-volume-and-counting Brentford Trilogy) will go a long way toward alleviating the mass confusion.

Find the full review here. ( )

Hmmm. Maybe I am getting old and losing my sense of humour, but I just didn't find this at all funny - or, for that matter, even engaging.

When I turned 50, I adopted the Nancy Pearl rule for book reading. She says: 'If you're fifty years old or younger, give every book fifty pages before you decide to commit yourself to reading it, or give it up. If you're over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100. The result is the number of pages you should read before deciding'. Don't know why I didn't give it up somewhere in chapter 10 - at the mid 40 pages mark. I guess I wanted to give Rankin the benefit of the doubt, as I found some of his earlier stuff really funny. In the end, I forced myself to read it through to the end - after the first hundred pages, really just to get it off my bedside table.

Can't remember who used the great put down 'that's not writing, it is typing' but it could have been about this. Alternatively, it could be an example of giving a monkey a typewriter and eventually it will type Shakespeare; and stopping it long before the end is acheived. Or maybe Rankin just keeps writing and every now and then sends stuff off to the publisher.

Whatever, this didn't do it for me. ( )