Peter Guttridge

"The King of Crime Comedy" -- Shots Magazine boasts the cover, so, natch, dreaming of Colin Watson and Simon Brett and Robert Barnard and a bucketload of others, I grabbed Cast Adrift. I can't tell you how disappointed I was. This has to be the ghastliest book I've read in a very long time. It's a late entry in the Nick Madrid series; I can only assume the earlier entries were a whole hell of a lot better, as described by various worthies, plus trade journals like Publishing News, who're show more quoted on the back of the book. Heaven forfend all the praise might have anything to do with Guttridge's job as Crime Fiction Reviews Editor for The Observer.

Nick Madrid and his frightful pal Bridget are in Mexico on the set of a budget-strapped pirate-movie musical. Everyone's screwing everyone else and that's jolly hilarious. Nick's not very good at screwing -- how much more hilarity can you bear? -- but he manages to bed all sorts of wonderfully lovely babes anyway: reader, my ribs are just one big solid ache. There are homosexual, Rastafarian, Elgar-loving modern-day pirates. Oh, spare me, spare me; nothing like a few prejudice-reinforcing jokes about gays, eh? And I'm just mentioning the good bits.

Oh, and there are appalling displays of ignorance/carelessness. The dinosaurs apparently died out a mere six million years ago (page 100; and, no, it's not a typo, because this wrong datum is repeated on the next page). Our hero listens to the end of BBC Radio 4's Today programme at 9am (page 162) . . . which might seem reasonable enough until you realize he's doing the listening in Mexico, which is displaced by several hours from GMT. And so on. In the normal way, this is the kind of stuff you expect the copyeditor to have picked up, if no one else did; but on the basis of a few scattered evidences I suspect the copyeditor here was confronted by a nightmare, and performed something herculean to clear up as much as s/he did.

Why didn't I just throw Cast Adrift at the wall after the first 50 pages or so? I'd have proved my manly stamina by then. Well, I guess I kept going because, perhaps half a dozen times during the book, I did actually laugh. That was enough to delude me into the futile hope that surely things must get better. Er . . . show less

5.0 out of 5 stars Less than Divine right, May 16, 2011
By
E. Crowley (QUINCY, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Last King of Brighton (Brighton Mysteries) (Hardcover)

THE LAST KING OF BRIGHTON, the second book in the Brighton trilogy, begins in 1963. John Hathaway is the teen-age son of Dennis Hathaway, the most dangerous man in Brighton. He runs the city without conscience or remorse. His son is interested in only one thing: the emerging music show more tidal wave that will put Britain at the top of the charts.

John is part of a band called the Avalons; his best friend is Charlie Laker, the drummer. As a band, they aren't particularly good but they never have trouble finding a pub or a club willing to let them play. Gradually, they become "supporter bands" for some of the big names in the UK. John and his friends are delighted at their success, dreaming of being on the same level as The Animals and, maybe, even the Beatles. John's ambitions are limited to rock-n-roll until he realizes that all the places the Avalons play are either owned by his father or have installed, willingly or not, the one-armed bandits that provide Dennis with significant cash. John begins to look at his father's business with eyes wide open. Rock-n-roll success isn't guaranteed but his father's income is based on instilling fear in some and satisfying greed in others. There is no end to people depositing money into his father's coffers. The elder Hathaway is content being one of the forces that dominates Brighton but John intends to be a one-man force, the King of Brighton.

THE LAST KING OF BRIGHTON does not have a wasted sentence. As the writer takes the story through the 1960's, it is a tour of the cultural landscape of one area of Great Britain that is a microcosm of the nation as a whole. In CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT, the story encompasses the dismembered bodies of two women found in the left luggage departments of British Rail in the 1930's to a botched raid on a housing estate in the present day. The second book revisits the trunk murders and introduces the Great Train Robbery, seemingly planned and executed by Brighton gangs, including an upper level police officer. As the story moves to the present, conflicts that have strained governments and societies make their mark. Former Chief Constable Robert Watts, who lost his career because of the Milldean housing estate raid says, "I think everything has to do with everything in Brighton. Corruption in the sixties links back to the Trunk Murders in the thirties and forward to now. And Hathaway, from being a peripheral figure, is now taking center stage."

Bob Watts is still a decent man, trying to do the right thing, trying to correct his mistakes, but he is hampered by his unofficial status among the members of Brighton's crime fighting squad. He doesn't know if there is anyone, other than Sgt. Sarah Gilchrist, whom he can trust. Jimmy Tingley has spent his life in the shadows, a killer trained and primed by Her Majesty's forces. Nothing he does is straightforward and everything he does is in service to a goal only he knows. Tingley is a good man to have on one's side but no one is ever clear which side that is.

A series of brutal murders are discovered, the method a trademark of the Bosnian gangs who learned how to kill without mercy in the Balkan genocides of the nineties. It will not spoil the story if the reader decides to skip the Prologue; the brutality is searing. There is no mercy in THE LAST KING OF BRIGHTON. Hathaway is not amoral: he does not caring about right or wrong. He is immoral, knowing the difference between right and wrong, and always choosing wrong. He is too callous, too focused on ends to be considered insane because of the means.

Peter Guttridge has a rare talent. With the exception of the Prologue, the author writes about the brutality and the blood lust as if he were a reporter for a newspaper. He makes statements without tone; the reader is to take these statements for what they are. With one or two exceptions, the characters are not people one comes to care about. They made choices that led to their deaths. They die brutally but they lived that way, bringing to mind the old saw that those who live by the sword, die by the sword.

As with CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT, there is no resolution to the story. That will come at the end of the summer with the publication of the final book in the trilogy, GOD'S LONELY MAN. This is a series that is compelling because of the writing and the sense throughout the books that God saves the city for the sake of the one righteous man. show less

This is the funniest book I've read in forever. It's another Jeanie recommendation. Nick Madrid is a British free lance reporter covering a Comedian convention in Montreal. He's trying out a new yoga stance when, from his upside-down perch he saw the naked body of a woman flying by his window. She ended up in the shallow end of the hotel swimming pool and Nick ended up trying to figure out why. The characters in this book are funny but the author is hilarious. Unfortunately, this gem hasn't show more been published in the U.S. yet, but I found it, quite reasonably priced, on a British web site. It's a great read. show less

“City of Dreadful Night” is the title of a poem written by Scottish poet, James Thomson. He began writing the poem in 1870 and finished it three years later. It is the work of a man who is a pessimist, a man who sees little, if anything, positive about the world around him. The city of the poem is London as viewed by a man who has lost his faith and is unable to go beyond his own melancholy to look at the life around him.

The poem is available on Wikipedia and, in the comments about the show more poem, George Saintsbury wrote “what saves Thomson is the perfection with which he expresses the negative and hopeless side of the sense of mystery….”

Most mystery fanatics want resolutions for the problems that are thrown at the characters especially when most of the characters are likeable. Robert Watts, chief constable, Sarah Gilchrist, sergeant in the police, Kate Simpson, radio journalist, and James Tingley are decent people in their own ways. Resolutions do not come easily in CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT.

In this book , the city is Brighton, long a destination for those seeking the sea, entertainment, and escape. The book begins with news reports of the discovery of the torso of a woman’s body in a trunk in the Left Luggage area of Brighton Central Railway Station. The legs are discovered at the King’s Cross Station Luggage Office. It is July, 1934.

The Milldean housing estate in Brighton was a dangerous place for anyone. On a hot afternoon, members of the Brighton police force are ready for an assault on one of the residences. “Information was received from an impeccable source. A violent criminal, wanted for two shootings and suspicion of involvement in three others, was holed up in a house in Milldean before crossing to France tomorrow. He was known to be armed and dangerous….I approved an operation to enter the premises forcibly and arrest him.” But nothing is as it is supposed to be and four people die. A riot ensues and the police are the enemy. It is July, 2009.

At a press conference, Chief Constable Robert Watts announces, prematurely, that he is backing his troops unquestioningly. It does not take long for Watts to be asked to resign since, technically, the police were operating under his direction even though he was not present. It also does not take long for Watts to realize he has been set up. Watts is determined to clear his name and he joins forces with Kate Simpson and James Tingley, a shadowy man from a shadowy organization.

The story changes time periods smoothly; the reader is never in doubt about which year they are in. The transitions flow so neither part of the story is allowed to be forgotten.

Saintsbury’s comment about the negative side of mystery is a perfect summary of CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT. It doesn’t end with the good guys riding off into the sunset and the bad guys riding on a rail. In fact, it doesn’t end. Guttridge conceived this as the first part of a trilogy. Happily, the second book, THE LAST KING OF BRIGHTON, is due to be published in early June. This is a series that must be read in order. It is unlike most other series, with characters whose faults have serious consequences but who are trying to do the right thing. In the hands of another writer, the failure to resolve the mysteries might very likely persuade the reader that a follow-up to the story would be a waste of more reading time. But the reader realizes, as the threads come together and then split apart again and again, that the full story can’t be confined to one book. The reader will sign on for the long haul more than willingly. show less