03 Oct 2012 16:07:03
Anyone suspicious that the publishing industry may be run by a small group of corporate-minded killjoys will applaud the DIY-ethic of Shevlin, who has published this quirky comic novel himself. The perpetually astonished hero finds himself in a conspiracy involving murder and the theft of cabinet-level documents, having done no more than give directions to a large man wearing a balaclava on the Holloway Road (mental note: men in balaclavas are either thugs or terrorists, unless they have very poor circulation in their ears). Shevlin's offbeat brand of urban absurdism should appeal to anyone susceptible to Nicola Barker's whimsy, though the penchant for made-up onomatopoeic verbs can become a bit trying: "scooshed", "tocked" and "prunked" in a paragraph about parking a car. But you can't help being tickled by Shevlin's view of Covent Garden as a place "thick with mildly diverting notions which now had their own branded carrier bags"; or the Holloway Road afflicted by "the North London disease that turns any unwary building into a chicken shop".
