How to Be Bad: A Novel (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: Bad Jesus, Cancer Boy, Janet Mather (more...)

Editorial Reviews

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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

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 Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; 1st edition (May 26, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312328265
• ISBN-13: 978-0312328269
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #996,138 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars wild thriller , June 8, 2005

By	Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews (#1 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

In Richmond on the Thames, twenty-something Mark Madden owns a bookstore that sells rare books. After the "Son of God" destroys a "dirty" book, he gets into an incident in the nearby park resulting in a wacko punching him in the forehead. The EMTs take him to the hospital where the cops react the same way as they did with the burned book insisting he is lucky to still breathe. At the hospital Caro Sewell sits down next to Mark; she was his girlfriend for six months when he was eighteen until she dumped him to blow a teacher.

Caro admits she owes him eighteen months as every two years she reinvents herself and drops her boyfriend. To his shame the mousy Mark still wants her and loves her. Caro teases him about his anal lists that he draws up on nonsensical subjects, but also offers him a test of his love for her. She draws up a list: 1) father; 2) Warren; and 3) Jesus. If he kills the trio she will give him the year and half he did not have with her that she owes him. Although he fears prison he is obsessed with Caro, will Mark go mad with or without her?

This is a wild thriller that stars a strange lead couple. Readers will keep on going in one sitting to learn whether Mad Mark Madden will choose love and death or the collective safe route. Fans will believe his choice and his follow-up as David Bowker leaves his audience pondering how bad someone can become if the price is right.

Harriet Klausner

3.0 out of 5 stars How to be bizarre , August 18, 2005

By	Antimony3 (Budd Lake, NJ) - See all my reviews

I have mixed emotions about this book. I think that the idea for the plot was fairly original and the writing was brisk enough to make me want to keep reading despite the bizarre and dark content overtones.

The story is about a man (Mark) who reunites with his crazy ex girlfriend (Caro). Caro is supposedly very beautiful and it is this beauty that makes men do crazy things for her. Mark is a relatively normal guy who keeps finding himself mixed up in a web of violence due to his relationship with her. It turns out that when Mark and Caro first parted ways, he was devasted to the point where he did not know how to really be a man let alone how to be a "bad" man -- to put it mildly: Mark was a wimp. Over the course of the novel, Mark gets beat up, humiliated, married, chased by the law, and stalked by a psychotic lovestruck killer. It's a lot to handle for your average 23 year old. Caro asks Mark to kill people for her because they have wronged her in some way. He realizes that the idea is crazy but somehow the bodies end up dead. I won't spoil the story by telling you how. Suffice it to say that if you are into dark Brit Lit, this may be right up your alley. I would like to point out that the author works Nick Hornby's name into his story at least 20+ times and this is sort of like a much darker version of High Fidelity. I have no inclination to read anyting else by this author in the future and this book wasn't a total waste of my time, it just wasn't my style. Worth taking out of the library. Then ending may surprise you.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars pretty good, October 5, 2006

By	J. Torres "EL GUAPO" (Bridgeport, CT) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

yeah it waz a pretty good book....kina crazy...u swhould buy it!!!