Wednesday, July 20, 2016

"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

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11 Comments:

Blogger Paul D Brazill said...

Ta much!

July 20, 2016  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

My pleasure, Makes me want to go nut someone at a bar.

July 20, 2016  
Blogger Paul D Brazill said...

Make sure to take your specs off.

July 21, 2016  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

I should take a head-butting class. With what part of the head does one hot one's opponent? And what part of the opponent's head should one aim to hit?

July 21, 2016  
Blogger seana graham said...

Got to get to this one, though not because of the head-butting part.

Not that it couldn't come in handy.

July 21, 2016  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

A head butt sounds so much nicer if one calls it a Glasgow Kiss.

I read somewhere that Paul said he wanted this book to be a grimmer but funner version of Guns of Brixton. That seems about right.

July 21, 2016  
Blogger seana graham said...

Interesting. Hard to do both.

July 21, 2016  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

This book is a bit grimmer, but I'm not sure either is less funny than the other. This one does have a number of passages that say things funny, rather than saying funny things. Those are my favorite parts.

July 21, 2016  
Blogger Paul D Brazill said...

In my home town the Glasgow Kiss is called the Blackhall kiss, after one of the mining towns outside Hartlepool.

July 22, 2016  
Blogger Paul D Brazill said...

Yep, with CLB I wanted to up the absurdity of the character's situations so the dark bits became darker and the silly bits became even sillier. Hell is other people watching you slip on a banana skin. Or something.

July 22, 2016  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

Hmm, why won't Blogger let me post to my own blog? What I tried to say was thanks for the comments. Makes me think about going back through the books and seeing if that holds up.

July 22, 2016  

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