PC Nathan Pilbeam is a copper with a difference. Just 24 years old and stuck out in Guildford (sorry, Guildford), he has a passion for criminal investigation and a need to prove his pet theory that all crime must be set in a political, social and cultural context. He reads everything he can get his hands on, the better to understand the world around him; his colleagues call him “Nate of the Station” (Jonathan Coe has a special genius for puns). Reading up on a case – he’ll take in anything from the London Review of Books and Freud to blogging comedians – he is struck by something he finds online, an argument that comedy does a disservice to society by dissipating anger. “Every time we laugh at the venality of a corrupt politician, at the greed of a hedge fund manager, at the spurious outpourings of a right-wing columnist, we’re letting them off the hook.”
Coe said something along the same lines a few years ago when he was talking about his much-loved novel What a Carve Up! (1994). One might fairly ask: where does that leave Jonathan Coe? For, just over two decades later, he has followed up that outrageously funny novel with a sequel. Or rather, a sequel of sorts: while it is certainly connected to its predecessor, you’ll do fine with this book if you have never read What a Carve Up! And while this novel might not make you double up with helpless laughter in quite the same way, it’s proof that Coe retains his comic gift.
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