From Publishers Weekly
An index to how zany this stand-alone crime novel from British author Bowker (I Love My Smith & Wesson) can get comes when the narrator confesses his unintended complicity in several deaths, a suicide, a car bombing, an incident of eye-gouging and similar atrocities, and his concerned dad frets, "You realise all this'd break your mother's heart if she knew about it?" That comic deadpan tone infuses all the wild events that sweep up book dealer Mark Madden when he lets manipulative ex-lover Caro back into his life. When Caro asks milquetoast Mark to kill her ex-boyfriend, her father and her loanshark, he doesn't say yes, but he finds he can't quite say no, either. The first two deaths happen despite his intercession, but they're enough for Caro to become filthy rich and marry Mark. Problems only worsen, though, with the newlyweds fleeing assassination attempts, a cyberstalker and the loanshark. There's no plot to speak of, only a series of random incidents whose escalating intensity ultimately goad Mark to become a man of action, but Bowker keeps the pacing brisk and the humor flowing. Agent, Barbara J. Zitwer.
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This amusing satire answers the question: What would happen if an oversensitive lad-lit protagonist were forced to deal with violent freaks from London's meanest streets? At 23, Mark Madden runs a failing rare bookshop and considers Nick Hornby first editions a retirement investment. In a narrative voice that maintains its pleasantly mocking tone even as dead bodies pile up around him, Mark relates the story of how his life takes a drastic turn for the worse, forcing him to toughen up into a real man. In chapters sporting titles such as "Hi, Infidelity," trouble starts finding Mark even before his sociopathic girlfriend asks him to kill several people. (Her targets include a wonderfully realized gangster known as Bad Jesus because of his uncanny resemblance to the Man from Nazareth.) As with most satires, it's hard to work up much passion for these characters. But the story's clever, and it delivers one scene involving Bad Jesus and a group of swooning nuns that will have readers giving thanks to the gods of wicked humor.
Frank SennettCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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