"Kamilla grinned and head-butted him": A look at Paul Brazill's latest

Back in December 2014, I praised Paul Brazill's Guns of Brixton for not pretending to be "anything but a comic romp, a kind of high-spirited musical without music, albeit one full of violence, the threat thereof, and all sorts of unpleasant bodily effluvia, whether the result of gun blasts or not."

I'm not yet finished reading that novel's follow-up, the brand-new Cold London Blues, but a few snippets suggest that this one will be as much fun as GOB:

"A group of drunken middle-aged men in Manchester United football shirts staggered out of a Thai restaurant shouting racial abuse at an angry looking chef who was chasing them out and wielding a machete.

"‘Ah, Northern scum,’ said Tim. ‘Cultural ambassadors.’

"‘Indeed,’ said Gregor, in the clipped RP English usually only found in 1940s public information films. ‘Unfortunately, at certain times of year, they infest the streets of this great city like lice.’"

and

"Father Tim slammed one of them in the Adam's apple with his fist and then kicked him in the groin."

and

"Kamilla grinned and head-butted him."

Add an occasional jab at Cool Britannia and at noisy cafés, and I feel like I know England even better than I do when I'm there.

© Peter Rozovsky 2016