If you’re worried this is going to be a mind-numbing book about politics, you couldn’t be more wrong.  It is a hugely entertaining and genuinely fun, “mostly true” tale of two young-at-heart grown-ups who just decide, one day, they won’t sit around and do nothing while their country goes to the dogs around them – a sentiment I’m sure many of us share in the current climate.  But I don’t want to downplay the validity of their mission; they’re clearly both exceptionally smart ...

A lot of fun this colourful action romp from Carlos Lozano, which combines good, old-fashioned cartoon entertainment for the family with a more contemporary superhero palette.  This brings to mind caricature slapstick of the 80s and 90s, with a PG certificate, generally suitable and enjoyable for all, such as the Jim Carrey movie The Mask.  Admittedly, some of the more cartoonish visuals perhaps don’t portray so well on the page, and would certainly be more suited to a graphic novel or othe...

I should immediately disclose that I helped Arthur Williams in producing this book, but that has no bearing whatsoever on my review, which I submit freely and honestly.  In a nutshell, this is an excellent book, and Arthur is a fantastic author, who knows his subject matter very well.  As the book’s protagonist, surgeon Ben Anderson, undergoes his own routine heart procedures, what starts off as a mind-bending trip on the powerful, hallucinogenic sedative ketamine turns into a wondrous expe...

I have to admit, this book was laugh-out-loud funny at times; I found myself cracking up in a way I haven’t done for years when reading.  Well done, Carlos; comedy gold.  Bit crude and crass, at times, in a way where you know instantly it can only have been written by an English author; the language is very strong and its coarseness sometimes invokes an uncomfortable wince.  I don’t have a problem with that, as such – I’m no prude – but it has to be funny.  Though, in truth, Carlos ...

Very sharply scripted, biting satire, and more of the same from the sardonically witty Harlin, this time set against the increasingly fashionable backdrop of the battle of the generations: Millennials vs. GenX (or whatever monicker the superior former have deemed dominion to label the latter with).  It was by pure coincidence that I read this book, about a former creative, days from his 50^th birthday, just a few days before my own 50^th birthday, and I therefore felt I had more of a stake in i...

Here is a collection of famous and not-so-famous quotes and quips by renowned and well-known historical figures, given contemporary punchlines, some clever, others observational and some just a bit wacky.  The illustrations are great, and some of the adages themselves gave rise to thought, but to be honest the jokes weren’t my cup of tea at all; I think the book would be far more suited to a U.S. audience, accustomed to that style of humour.  That said, it was interesting to see the quotes ...

I’m not necessarily a big fan of high fantasy of the otherworld and dragons variety, so it’s great to see one like this, which doesn’t take itself seriously.  Oh, I don’t doubt that behind this mocking façade Kyle is actually a huge fan of the genre – he is simply too knowledgeable and accomplished not to be – but you can see that he takes great pleasure here in dissecting its usual tropes and clichés in the name of satire.  Despite that, though, and the Hitchhiker’s Guide-esq...

Bizarrely offbeat, this book is part fantasy, part satire and generally overall, I think, mostly literary fiction.  Those familiar with the original Baron Munchausen tales – and I refer now to the book, not the tall stories told about the real man himself – will recognize this as much of the same, with the same strangely vivid, visual setpieces and abstract palette, though I have to say I’m not entirely sure why the author chose to pigeonhole himself with a direct sequel to a literary c...

Something of a mixed bag for me, this chaotic comedy of errors and enlightenment.  On the one hand, I’m a big fan of (the awesomely named) Merlin Franco, and I love his intelligent, insightful and wit-laden writing style; on the other, I wasn’t keen on this particular tale, which I would describe as a fictional travel memoir.  I would say this is one for its audience – and a good one at that, which perhaps may not be clearly reflected in my writing; fans of this book will surely be thos...

I’m in two minds about this book by Christopher Lude.  Whilst on the one hand it is exceptionally well written and presented, and at times offers traces of poignancy, it also felt on the other to be something of a whimsical look at a particularly emotive subject, and one of huge controversy, particular in God-fearing countries like the States.  It took me a while to come to the conclusion that this book is entirely fictional, as its introduction does appear to suggest otherwise; I am theref...

A novel premise for a book, this one, and delivered with impeccable prose and timing.  A mature and very experienced anthropology student, still trying for his degree after several years of procrastination and failure, watches his life pass him by and crumble around him, as he spends more and more time with the street-workers who are the subject of his dissertation.  The real star of this book is not so much the story, which is not really its point, but the razor-sharp wit and rallying dialog...

Whilst much of this book is generally quite amusing, I never really felt that there were any laugh-out-loud moments, of which I would have liked to see a few.  Rather, the comedy is more chaotic in nature than witty.  As you might expect, this tale of misadventures told from a cat’s point of view is very adult-orientated, with strong language and bawdy humour, resembling those grown-up cartoons which made the rounds in the 1980s and ‘90s.  Felix is portrayed rather more as a teenage lad o...

There are two sides to this side-splitting book, one laugh-out-loud comedy and the other a little more serious in tone, enough to make you wonder if you really should be laughing along with Will Goodrich – not for any politically correct reason, but because you feel this is a man with a very sour history of women.  Obviously I don’t know anything about Will’s three marriages, nor will I blindly take his side, but as a fellow man of the world, I can utterly laugh along with this book.  I...

I commented, in my previous reviews of books in this series, on my assumption that the Pirate books were a trilogy, because the author sent me three.  In fact, Prine appears to be creating something of a whole universe regarding the series.  There is so much ground left, clearly, and indeed in the back matter of Pirate Penance it is revealed there is much more to come from this bickering, bed-hopping band of 80s rock stars.  In fact, a whole third of this particular instalment is actually a s...

It’s fair to say that my review of this book’s predecessor was not overly glowing, and unfortunately when reviewing Pirate Booty I am inclined to be even less so, for which I am genuinely sorry; I like this author, and we have engaged in a fair amount of correspondence of late (I have been sent the three books in the trilogy for my unbiased review).  Not that Prine’s writing is in any way not good – far from it, the books have a wonderful style and voice, which for an ensemble cast wi...

Insightful and good fun, this is first in a trilogy (I assume) that I have been given by the author to carry out my unbiased and impartial review.  It’s a good start, and I look forward to reading the next books in the series, but be warned, without wishing to spoil this book in any way, it is not a self-contained, standalone title; you are required to keep reading.  Telling the story, behind the scenes, of a superstar British rock band as they tour the U.S. in the 80s, whose record company...

Right off the bat, I feel I should make a couple of points clear about this book.  Firstly, I loved it!  I enjoyed every fantastic moment, and was poised very quickly and throughout to award it a well-deserved five stars.  This didn’t change for the duration – until I finished, that is.  Then I very quickly took one of the stars off – and that was a calm reaction; I considered removing more.  In fact, I was actually so annoyed that my tablet nearly went flying through my open second-flo...

I love the premise of this very topical, contemporary satire.  The vast majority of us, in our right mind, are waiting for the day – praying, indeed – that the woke left implode and figuratively eat each other.  The intelligent and rational amongst us know that they are just not compatible with each other, and their ideological fantasy world is simply not achievable.  Sadly, the rational majority are becoming increasingly silenced by a culture of fear.  Social media has fertilized an utte...

A very smart and funny book, I really enjoyed this one.  Don’t take the metaphor too seriously; in fact, I would say forget about the bizarre story altogether and just enjoy Dickerson’s clever writing and laugh out loud, dry wit.  This is more a book about the author than the characters (if there is any differentiation), and I suspect there is a lot of Marc’s self in all of the ensemble he has presented in Art Farm.  It is fantastical biographical, I am sure, but first and foremost it i...

If you like flash fiction with an edge, I think you’ll really like this collection, like I did.  A fun and creative, if at times sardonic play on mainstream and utterly obscure headlines, compiled during the lockdown of the pandemic.  For the most part, as you might expect, there is a lot of left-wing, anti-Trump, anti-Brexit vitriol in some of these 150-word or so vignettes – thankfully, that’s not all the book is about, though.  All in all, the authors are good quality, and the cause ...

I really like short stories – and I really liked the collection of anecdotes in Not Literary.  Combining autobiography with at times some riotous comedy – about such events as young women being coerced into stripping in a bar and liking it a bit too much, and her almost crippling herself to buy her colleagues donuts – Auriane’s are real crackers.  She takes mundane day-to-day events and squeezes out the laughs; I for one found myself in stitches at times, right from pretty early on.  ...

Bizarre, fun, cynical, emotional, educational, superficial, entertaining – there are many different adjectives which could be used to describe The Friends of Allan Renner, but its genre might not be quite so easy to pinpoint.  I guess you could categorize it primarily as literary fiction, although some of which occurs is too narrative in style to pigeonhole it as such – furthermore, often the description doesn’t even apply.  The friends of the piece are the very small handful of individ...

A slightly difficult book to review, mainly because it is a particularly difficult one to describe.  Not that Stephen isn’t a good author – he is intelligent, laugh out loud funny and incredibly eloquent – but if I’m being perfectly frank, I think he left me behind quite notably; truthfully, I was a little lost for most of the book.

The story, as far as I could tell, revolved around an investigation into a catastrophic incident involving a fleet battleship far in the future, and the ...

I do like a bit of British curmudgeonry, and this well written, well-crafted example of suaveness is your classic wartime comic adventure, very much with a feel of The Thirty-Nine Steps about it, infused with the tongue in cheek innuendo of John Steed and Emma Peel.

It’s a good, fun read, as our roguish upper-class spook is charged with recovering and transporting a top-secret suitcase, which can change the outcome of the imminent breakout of World War Two.  Hitler and Churchill alike are ...

I have to be honest, when I first saw the blurb for this book, my heart sank at the thought of yet another otherworld, magical fantasy.  But, while this book is kind of that, and certainly seems to plummet in that direction in the second half, for the first half of the book I was actually very surprised to see that it was nothing of the sort.  What it is, in fact, is a cynical, sardonic and at times very funny satire on day to day life in the office workplace, and an excuse for Sanin to pick ...

A well-written crime comic-thriller, about an unassuming estate agent who begins an affair with the wife of a wealthy criminal and finds himself up to his neck in money laundering and drug smuggling.  This is a conventional and pretty simple tale which is not excessive in any capacity, but rather a cosy read; it is probably far more suited to readers who like low-action crime caper fiction based on witty dialogue and humorous personalities.  There is a touch of cynicism in Browne’s portraya...

Sharp and clever, the more you read this witty social commentary, the deeper and more numerous its insightful layers develop; by the end, you find yourself nodding in approval at the way it went.

As a man seeks psychiatric help to unravel the profoundly interesting psychotic episodes he is experiencing, he begins to become increasingly aware of the myriad mental health issues affecting each and every person around him – some mildly reactive; some severely symptomatic.  Gradually, his own e...

Another tremendous book from Simon Gary, and in this prequel to the wonderful Gone to the Dogs he has really honed his craft in character development; Thryke is a masterclass.  Not reaching out for some of the hilarity or bawdy laughs of its predecessor, this instalment is a much more subtle, poignant comedy, with greater focus on the genuinely moving emotive elements of …Dogs: sadness, happiness, romance and a life of rural innocence.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t a great fan of Cornelius ...

For the most part, this is a fun and entertaining vampire action-comedy, which crosses Blade with What We Do in the Shadows, and I enjoyed reading it, gliding through the book with enormous ease.  Phipps has created some great characters, including villains, to get your teeth into (excuse the pun), and a pretty novel storyline, in which the elder vampires are some sort of all-powerful Illuminati – the one-percenters – who, like the rest are happy to commit genocide to further their corpor...

I must confess to struggling with this book somewhat.  With an ensemble cast of characters, and different strands of a connected storyline, I admit that I spent much of the read lost and trying to play catch-up.  I saw it through, of course, because I was keen to see where this otherwise intriguing, dark, absurd and occasionally disturbing tale was leading.  It is, in fact, a very clever, if simple overall story, in which two misogynistic zealots set out to genetically create a subservient gl...

This wryly comic and academically enlightening look at the professional day-to-day in the working life of a hospital surgery intern, based on real-life stories and experiences, is a real treat, if a little hard to stomach at times – as is the nature of this type of book: i.e. medical profession fly-on-the-wall.  There are a lot of this extremely popular and growing genre coming into print these days, and although I have to say they really don’t appeal to me personally (as someone married ...

William says in the preface to this little gem that he adheres to no particular format or type when he writes, and that is absolutely true of what follows.  Quirky, punchy and interesting, the three very short tales in this book are simply the author’s imagination poured onto the page.  That’s not to say that he isn’t a particularly professional author – he is, and a very good one, to boot – he just chooses not to form his work into the moulds of the usual expectations and conventio...

This author knows his stuff, and this is a high-quality work – hugely entertaining and instantly engaging.  I was hooked right from the off, and this didn’t fade; in fact, the more I read, the more eager I was to find out where this unusual tale was heading.

Alternating two parallel timelines, it accompanies a grieving, middle-aged U.S. State worker, back for Xmas from working in Afghanistan, who finds himself immediately hospitalized for a DVT the moment he lands in the U.S.  As he recu...

Yvgeny Yedynak is an undertaker with panache.  He employs a gravedigger the police mistake for a zombie, carries the finger of his dead father in his pocket and drives a hearse called Cerberus, in Greek mythology the dog who guards the gates of Hades.  He is selectively honest and sees no harm in pawning anything of value remaining on a corpse once the relatives have surrendered it for burial. However, when he discovers the headless and handless body of an elderly man in one of his freshly-du...

This is one of those books which isn’t really about anything (though, the ending is genuinely staggering).  Set over the course of a weekend, it tells, from a multi-person viewpoint, of the everyday lives of a group of young twenty-somethings – and a few peripheral others – who appear to live for nothing but smoking weed, drinking shots and getting laid.  Despite its excellent writing, it didn’t really appeal to me; in fact, in the main, I think this book is probably more suited to an...

Nobody Gets Out of Catering Alive really is a funny memoir.  My congratulations to the author.

Set in the 1990s and related in a rolling comedian chant – ‘I wish I could stop this compulsive entertaining’ – Joe Montaperto is a comedian down on his luck.  His hair is falling out, he’s only earning enough to pay for the bus to work and he’s living with his parents, creating his own maudlin entertainment by watching 1960s reruns.

As he lurches through his thirties with chronic inso...

In the beautiful forest hills of Boulder County, Colorado, Buddy cultivates weed on his conservation land.  Whilst the growing of weed is not illegal in the state, he is unlicensed and pays no tax… suffice also to say that he grows slightly more than the few plants permitted for personal use.  Now, whilst Buddy has never bothered anybody before with his lifelong hobby and livelihood, he is suddenly attracting all sorts of unwanted attention – the wrong kind - from Colorado’s neighbourin...

Golgotha is the third book in Guy Portman's Necropolis trilogy. It is as dark and sociopathic, as only the British know how to be, and will be welcomed by fans of Necropolis and Sepultura.

Dyson Devereux works in London in the funeral industry.  However, whilst awaiting trial in the San Vittore Prison, Milan, he has been a prey of the possessive Alegra, femme fatale on steroids, with whom he had spent only a couple of nights prior to his incarceration.

Upon Dyson’s release, Alegra is dete...

Sharp, dry humour penetrates every word and line of this subtle, cosy comedy.  Not big on storyline or drama, this is rather witty monologue and dialogue, telling the life story of a group of elderly men and women who have been friends since childhood and – for two of them in particular – share their experiences and musings of life over countless cups of coffee, in some of the Big Apple’s finest coffee shops and delis.  The comic banter bounces back and forth without respite, while Ray ...

Great fun and hugely entertaining, this light-hearted, humorous LGBTQ family drama is a very easy read.  As four siblings gather following the death of their mother, each gradually reveals a little more about the trials and tribulations of their own personal lives.  Not otherwise given much of an opportunity previously to bond, they are brought together more profoundly when two of them are kidnapped whilst on holiday in Mexico, whilst the other two work together to raise the ransom money.

Wh...

Engrossing, entertaining and utterly easy to read, I had no problem at all getting lost in these exciting, fun tales.  Chronicling the adventures of a young American soldier, discharged following the end of the Vietnam war, who decides to return to South East Asia, to live and travel, these short stories are based loosely on the real life exploits of the author, as well as stories he has heard and people he met.  This collection of anecdotes forms the whole, overall story of his months in, pr...

This bleakly unsettling, yet triumphantly entertaining L.A.-dream-turned-sour tale, laced with sharp, very black – and sometimes side-splitting – comedy, is a real welcome interjection to the noir genre.  Addressing a subject which is vastly overlooked in our society: the scrapheap of middle-age – an age which takes everything from you, one piece at a time, it is very coarse and sour, and very, very good.

Set in the early-current decade – the post-recession Obama years – East of Li...

A very dialogue driven and bizarre comedy, with that instantly recognizable quirky, dry Canadian humour, a lot of which is so deadpan it may go over the heads of some Stateside.  “Rocky Mountain Noir” pays heart on sleeve homage to the detective pulp of Mickey Spillane, but does so with its tongue so deep in its cheek it borders on spoof.

Fast-paced and talky, this book is a fusion of pulp, action and outright slapstick, laced with a few moments so laugh out loud funny they had me cracki...

“Looper” is not quite what I was expecting, but rather a pretty laid-back, inoffensive affair, telling the tale of a teenager who spend his 1980 summer break caddying on a pro golf course.  Although the tagline suggests this is a “coming of age” tale, I think perhaps the main character Ford is a couple of years too young to be described as that.  There are none of the usual puerile high-jinks which often accompany such a genre, and to be honest that is refreshing; Ford and his friends...

Will Link is a brilliant author, who a fantastic use of language (both description and dialogue), which will easily relate to younger and older adults alike.  While some of his subject matter may be a little coarse for the former, just remember that it is their age group this refers to, and they know it better than our nostalgic view of it.  Older readers can reminisce about the days of their youth, while the youngers can laugh at the commonalities between us, which still characterize their g...

In this obscure, yet wonderfully poetic metaphor, Theodor’s writing is artistic, warm and endearing, despite “Buy or Die”s darkly comic, somewhat disturbing subject.  Although the author’s English is perfectly crafted, I suspect much of the true prose has been lost a little in translation.  Yet, even in the resulting form it has an attractive, creative voice all of its own, and once I was able to level with his dry wit and surreal depiction, I started to enjoy reading it.

Set in a fr...

There is a wonderful, melodious tone of voice to Brian Kindall’s writing – his language is always classical and sometimes sublime – the nineteenth-century San Francisco prospectors’ era effortlessly permeates every carefully chose word and sentence and his knowledge of American historical setting appears almost innate, as he places you, vividly at every scene.  In a nutshell, he is a tremendously talented author.

But, as with most creative talents, there is a flaw on the flip-side.  ...

Very quickly when you start reading this book, the author’s affection for the era and its naivety come pouring through.  I didn’t know what to expect, realizing that the sitcom to which it refers - despite Simon Gary’s misleading foreword and blurb – is actually a fictional one, as are all the characters therein; though, clearly based on an element of reality and, by the looks of it, some industry experience on Gary’s part.  With its nods toward the “Carry On” movie style, and s...

I grabbed this one from my TBR list because it was short, and took my curiosity.  I wasn’t doing a cop-out – looking for an easy ride to shrink my review pile (honest) – it was more that the mysterious blurb sold me on this book.  What was it about?  Was it a short story, a funny monologue… a witty self-help guide?  I had literally no idea; all I knew was that it looked like a lot of fun, and something I could read with a cuppa.

What it actually was is the second of those three, mi...