Review
Nicholas Blincoe - Jello Salad
Serpent's Tail £7.99
Set in the seediest parts of Soho, Jello Salad is an explosive
journey into a violent, uncompromising world of drugs, gangsters and dis-functional
characters, Susan Ball is setting up a new restaurant in Soho using the money that she
stole from her corrupt husband Frank 'Ballistic' Ball and it is only a matter of time
until he tracks her down. At the same time, he needs to find Callum his son who has
disappeared with vast quantities of cocaine.
Hogie is a cook from Manchester who is hanging on to a .job in a
prime slot TV show by just managing to stay clear-headed enough to present it. He has a
predilection for older woman, a knack of acquiring them easily and a fiercely expensive
drug habit. Cheb is an odd character who is also drug dependent whilst dabbling in all
sorts of weird concepts and religions. Naz is a cool, indifferent Pakistani who fears
no-one and uses people unscrupulously to further his drug empire.
Basically, there are no ordinary characters although Susan comes the
closest. The story is one of murders, dealing and unhappy ends for a variety of people but
what sets it apart from most other novels of this type is the graphic though not
gratuitous violence. Things happen to characters which most people couldn't imagine in
even their most lurid moments and I certainly won't be able to look at an electric cooker
in the same light again for a while.
The violent scenes are told in a detached and factual way with the
emphasis, being more on the events themselves rather than the effect on each character.
There is a definite Quentin Tarantino mood about this book and it's eminently readable but
certainly to be avoided by the squeamish, Although the characters are unlike anyone most
of us have ever met before, there is a believability about them which enhances the
credibility of what could otherwise have been a far-fetched tale.
(Linda Ross)
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