The Satsuma Complex, by Bob Mortimer, 2022
If someone told you the engagingly daft comedian Bob Mortimer had written a novel, what would you expect? Wonder no more, because the answer is The Satsuma Complex. It is impossible to find a review of this novel which doesn’t use the word quirky, so let’s get that out the way up front – this is a quirky, funny crime novel full of the surreal humour which is Bob’s trademark. The challenge the author must have faced when sitting down to write this was whether this humour could be sustained over the length of a novel, or whether the more serious elements would be seen as ‘padding’.
The Satsuma Complex (possibly a reference to A Clockwork Orange?) is narrated by Gary Thorn, a lonely, 30-something solicitor’s assistant drifting through life. His only friends are his irascible next-door neighbour, Grace, and a squirrel he talks to in the park. Work is boring and unengaging, and he has only been on two dates since he moved to London. Anyone who has read Mortimer’s autobiography, And Away will recognise this description of a less than happy period of Bob’s life, pre-comedy, down to the cheap shiny suit and the spartan flat. Write what you know is the template being used here.
The novel opens with Gary getting out of his depth when an innocuous drink with a work acquaintance gets him entangled in an investigation into police corruption and organised crime. The acquaintance goes missing, presumed dead, but not before he has told Gary that he is investigating police corruption in their patch of South London. Shortly thereafter Gary meets and is smitten by Emily, who, it turns out, is also involved in the crime operation and is also out of her depth, being coerced into following him to find out what he knows about the investigation. Details of the police corruption are recorded in a memory stick which comes into Gary’s possession, making him a target of both the criminals and the corrupt police. (I think Mortimer drew inspiration from the Daniel Morgan murder case for this element of the narrative – some details have been changed but there are plenty of similarities as well).
This is not a particularly promising or original set up for a crime novel, even a comedy crime novel – the ‘someone goes missing and a memory stick with key details of the case needs to be kept safe by our unwitting hero’ scenario has been done before. When the police call round to tell Gary his friend is dead, he is ill-equipped for his part in what follows. Mortimer stresses the fact that Gary has no heroic elements to his character – and this isn’t going to be a situation where any hidden heroism emerges either. When threatened by the criminals who want the memory stick he is quite ready to hand it back, even though he knows it means his friend’s murderers will escape unpunished. His focus is really on pursuing a developing relationship with the fragrant Emily, undeterred by revelations about her involvement with the aforementioned gang,
The plot may be deeply unoriginal, but Gary is an engaging anti-hero. His comedic asides and internal monologues (especially the conversations with the friendly local squirrel) are pure Mortimer. You would have thought that absurd comedy and hard-boiled crime novels are an uncomfortable combination unlikely to work, but Mortimer just about pulls it off. If you aren’t a fan of Mortimer’s carefully judged silliness then you won’t find much to entertain you here. The crime novel element of the book is quite heavily cliched, from the femme fatale to the hyper-violent but well-spoken villain. The charms of the book are elsewhere – in the banter between Gary and his irascible neighbour, the surreal descriptions such as the cologne ‘Electricity’ by Seb Longcoq being ‘on the banana-y side of road-works’ or dogs named Zak Briefcase and Lengthy Parsnips.
Would this have been published if the author was not a celebrity? Honestly, I doubt it. The characters aren’t strong enough and the plot is predictable. Is the humour strong enough to compensate for these weaknesses? Yes – but only because we know and love Bob and appreciate his sense of humour. Without that context it would have struggled.
I think the good news is that there’s unlikely to be a series here. I am sure Mortimer’s publishers will be pushing his for more of the same to capitalise on his current high profile and the considerable success of this novel. But a career investigating crime doesn’t seem in store for Gary Thorn – perhaps he will discover the world of stand-up comedy, which I think will be much more his kind of thing.
The Reading Bug 