Killing Joke by
Anthony Horowitz
hbk out September 04
Published by Orion
at £9.99
Anthony Horowitz is a prolific writer of teenage novels - Alex Rider, child
spy - and of scripts for TV series like Poirot, Midsomer Murders, and most recently
Foyle's War. This is his first adult novel.
You see, there's this guy goes into a bar....
Guy Fletcher is a more-often-than-not out of work actor. The sort of face you
half remember from his fleeting appearances on all those familiar TV series like E for
Emergency and Manchester Murders. Oh, and of course he was the hero on one of
those Nescafé commercials. When he objects to a sick joke he overhears in a pub, he
gets headbutted for his pains. But, being the obsessive he is – his previous
preoccupation had been trying to find a Premium Bond millionaire – he can't leave it
there. Especially as the joke was about the death of Selina Moore, famed British
Oscar-winning actress, who just happened also to be Guy's secret mother. He decides
to track down the source of the joke. To find out where jokes come from.
The trail leads him initially to a Hungarian dentist, the dentist's golf partner,
the receptionist at the golf club, a troop of Boy Scouts, and ever onwards and
outwards. But all is not as innocent as it may seem. Matters take a sinister turn when
Guy realises he is being followed by three men. An Englishman, an Irishman, and a
Scotsman. His life is in danger when he slides on a banana skin, and finds a fly in his
soup. On the way to encountering the totally humourless and totally dangerous Liddy,
Guy is joined in his quest by Sally, whose mother meets her end in an exploding
house in Cambridge.
Horowitz himself has suggested the story is actually quite dark, and
reminiscent of the world of Kafka. That he is holding up to the light how we are
manipulated and lied to by governments. Really, it's just a long, and well-written
shaggy dog story. It starts in a world of reason and normality, but draws the reader
helter-skelter into an increasingly mad, mad world of exploding fat ladies, mass ranks
of nuns, and those interminable holding patterns on telephones playing electronic
versions of unbearable music while asking you to stay on the line. You're down the
rabbit hole with a vengeance, but will you ever find out how many top-secret
government technicians it takes to change a light bulb?
Well, I don't want to spoil the ending, do I?
(
Ian Morson
Author of Falconer books and short listed for 1999 Ellis Peters Historical Crime Dagger)
Killing Joke by
Anthony Horowitz
