Tangled Web UK Review October 2007
The Swap by
Antony Moore
pbk out June 08
(Vintage)
at £7.99
An unusual, but entertaining story which starts in a Cornish school twenty
years earlier. Harvey Briscow, the main character, swaps a Superman
comic with a younger boy, nicknamed 'Bleeder' Odd, for a length of
plastic pipe – then decades on, when he is running a 'comic shop' in
London, discovers that this first edition is now worth about thirty-
thousand pounds!
After a class reunion, which Harvey attends each year in the hope of
meeting Bleeder and somehow reclaiming the comic if it still survives,
all manner of complications arise. He breaks into Bleeder's old house and
finds the chap's mother dead in the cellar with a cut throat. The comic
mysteriously arrives in the post at his shop and then the police begin to
take an interest, driving Harvey further against the wall.
The characterisation is good, especially the portrayal of Harvey as a
chain-smoking, heavy drinking failure. I felt that the denoument was bit
weak, but this is always the hardest part to write. The jacket is correct in
calling it a 'black comedy' and it is certainly worth a read.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
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