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AS BAD AS IT GETS
Julian Rathbone
Allison & Busby £17.99 hbk Rel: June 2003
Reviewed by Mick Herron
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AS BAD AS IT GETSJulian RathboneAllison & Busby £17.99 hbk Rel: June 2003Reviewed by Mick Herron
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Those who worried what would become of spy novelists with the demise of the Cold War must have long since relaxed: the world is much nastier than it was when all we had hanging over us was nuclear Armageddon. As Bad As It Gets is Rathbone's follow-up to Homage, and in this one Chris Shovelin, enquiry agent ("I like people to get this right, otherwise they take me for some sort of sleazy gumshoe"), is experiencing brutality in Kenya similar to that uncovered in le Carré's Constant Gardener, though here it's the agri-chem business rather than Big Pharma in the author's sights. These are the new supervillains, and instead of secret island hideaways they have private armies and governments in their pockets. Rathbone is the right man for untangling all this: while his style is at times strikingly reminiscent of later Kingsley Amis - he has the same immediacy of expression, as if his narrator is noticing things even as he relays the information to us - his politics are much more agreeable; he's a lefty of the old school, and, between the breathless chases through sewers and elephant/helicopter face-offs, has much to say on who the real victims of corporate greed and chicanery are. Nor does he rate the chances of things improving all that highly. But there's humour embedded in the cynical overview. Shovelin is an engaging, if frequently bewildered, tour guide on this unofficial safari through Kenya (which has since, as Rathbone points out, undergone regime change), and the supporting cast includes a Guy's-educated Maasai warrior and a lavatory attendant writing an extended monograph on colonialism in Ulysses ("I was a student of Professor Terence Eagleton…"). Good stuff.
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