Ben Elton, 2019

You know when you read a book that just makes you go ‘I have to talk about this book’?

This was one of those books.

The book contains a series of seemingly unrelated plot lines which all come together beautifully at the end of the narrative/narratives. We have an older detective struggling to keep up with the various genders and identities and ‘hash tags’ which have crept up on him and hit him from behind; we have a young woman, attracted to power and money, caught in a desperate love affair with a man serving as a proxy for the Russian government, as he attempts to undermine an ‘England Out’ referendum; bloody Love Island is never far from the goings-on of the story; and an old down-and-out actor who finds himself at the forefront of a revisionist movement to criminalise sex offenders from history, particularly focusing on Samuel Pepys.

All of these frankly insane plot lines come together in an ending which, to be frank, kind of feels like it lacks the knockout blow it’s been building towards. Somewhere along the way, the story stopped being funny. It stopped being a satire and became a genuine detective thriller.

Don’t get me wrong, it was a fantastic book – it was legitimately thrilling. But it began as a satire with the veneer of a police procedural, and somewhere along the way it became a police procedural…

Detective Matlock and his two accomplices (a married lesbian, and a very not-gay [and he wants you to know it] right-winger) all work together to solve the murder of a transexual woman, Sammy Hill; whose murder, naturally, becomes an overnight sensation. Even more so when Matlock very publicly struggles to get his middle-aged head around the notion of Sammy’s chosen pronouns. The focus on the affect of media is very strong in this book, and we often see characters having to deliver public apologies – but the writer is also telling this very interesting story about the extent to which public opinion is influenced by these nefarious forces working for other countries, trying to undermine the UK. This means that anything and everything that’s reported on might well be shit-stirring by international enemies.

Malika is the young woman caught up in the international espionage game, falling into an unhealthy relationship with her employer at a ‘fake news’ enterprise. These guys are being paid by Putin himself to destabilise the UK in a referendum not unlike Brexit. We see Bunter Jolly (Boris Johnson), Guppy Toad (Michael Gove) and Greased-Hogg (Jacob Rees-Mogg) as unwitting playthings of Putin, working to further their own power and accidentally increasing Putin’s stranglehold at the same time. Some of the story’s strongest points occur within this part of it, and the exploration of the author’s interpretation of the ‘fake news’ machine and the extent of Russian interference is certainly something that’s going to resonate with us today. We also see how the ‘fake news’ machine is pumping works of fiction straight to the newsfeed of Matlock’s subordinates, particularly the straight, white, right-wing man. It’s a nice little link between the narratives that’s established early on in the story. It serves as an indication of the author’s intention to ultimately bring all the various plotlines together.

Rodney Watson’s story is the author exploring the ramifications of the MeToo movement, as well as showing us how the ‘fake news’ machine will exploit hashtags like this in order to create division in the country. He becomes the face of a movement to criminalise and prosecute the long-dead offenders of history, and in pushing himself into the spotlight he opens himself up to allegations of misconduct of his own. Inappropriate advances made at stage hands in the ‘90s, openly masturbating in front of women in the ‘80s, ‘copping a feel’ in the ‘70s… ‘consent’ is called into question time and again.

All the while, we have this sub-plot of Love Island.

Love Island comes under scrutiny, as a past contestant (is that the right word? Is it a competition? Honestly, I’ve never seen it, and I’m somewhat out of my depth talking about it…) comes forward to accuse another contestant of having non-consensually kissed her on television. By extension, Love Island has gone ‘totally toxic’, and requires a re-branding. Expressions like ‘toxic’ and ‘on the wrong side of history’ crop up a lot in the first half of the book, and really cement the idea that we’re reading a contemporary satire. Sadly, this is exactly the kind of stuff that starts to peter out as the author brings his various plot points together into one narrative, and doubles-down on the police procedural.

So, Love Island re-brands as Rainbow Island, and brings in contestants of all different colours and creeds; all sexualities and identities, all trans- and nons- and everything they can think of. And the show proves an overnight success. But, they very quickly realise there’s no sexual tension… there’s no kissing, there’s no sex, there’s no betrayal… no one is ‘coupling’ and they’re all getting on perfectly fine. Sure, it’s not ‘toxic’, but it’s not anything. It’s just… boring.

So they decide to ramp up the tension by turning the non-straight non-binary nons- against the heterosexual white couple. So now the show is a breeding ground for divisiveness and conflict, dancing tentatively on the line between ‘entertainment’ and ‘bullying’. It all plays into the hands of the people who’re terrified the world is being taken over by non-straight non-binary nons-, and that the heterosexuals are going to be slaves to masters flying a rainbow flag. The ‘fake news’ machine spins them into a fury, and furthers the division in the country. It’s only in writing this now that I come to appreciate how great a job the author did in writing this book. It’s all connected.

In the end though, the things that made the book a standout in modern fiction (and indeed, modern satire) are almost entirely found within the first half of the story – the second half, as I’ve said, sort of just becomes a police story. They rush to catch the killer, who’s knocking off people who were present in each seemingly separate story line. Detective Matlock has a hunch, his subordinates think he’s mad. He’s right, they catch the killer, and by God don’t ya know it was the Russians all along…

The ending was… fine. It was alright. It didn’t make me mad, and it didn’t make me feel like I’d wasted my time; but it did feel like it was lacking the wallop I’d been waiting for.

The book is outstanding though. Honestly, it’s a masterful reflection of our world as we know it. There’s Brexit, there’s Johnson and Gove and Rees-Mogg, there’s Yew Tree, there’s MeToo and there’s Love Island; isn’t that just the most 2010s book you’ve ever heard of? What a way to end the decade. It’s all here.