| This novel is about a group
of teenage delinquents in York who asked to steal chairs from a
museum on the North York Moors for television presenter Bryan
Betteridge. It is very much played for laughs with some stock
characters, such as the dim cockney Dean Martin who is the cousin of
the ultra-hard and mysterious Neville and the vicious bike thief
Walter Bowler. The novel moves along at a pretty cracking pace with
some wonderful scenes, particularly the denouement at Whitby in the
final pages of the novel. There are also some amusing swipes at
professional northerners (Fred Truman and Roy Hattersley spring to
mind) who believe that civilisation only begins at Sheffield. The
main problem however lies with the anonymous first person narrator
and hero, who is haunted by the death of his friend in an accident
in the local shunting yards. He is just far too intelligent and
well-educated for the surroundings he finds himself in. Jeremy
Cameron does it much better in his series of novels about a gang of
Walthamstow delinquents. |
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