Incompetnce

Genre-splicing can be a tricky business. For every Douglas Adams or Ann McCaffrey there's probably a million wannabes out there peddling reams and reams of very bad, very awkward 'unique convention-busting' fiction. If I had had no prior knowledge of this book or it's author I would probably have been put off by the quotes on the back describing it as "crime fantasy Fawlty Towers style" and "a revolutionary black comedy. Spookily similar to Douglas Adams". Thankfully, this book is written by Red Dwarf co-creator Rob Grant - who seems to be growing more and more talented with each new foray away from the sci-fi show that he made his name on.

The basis for Incompetnce (you may have caught on that it's spelt wrong, yeah?) is that in the near-future our world might be governed by the maxim that no-one can be "prejudiced from employment for reason of age, race, creed or incompitence [sic]". This sets the scene for an alarmingly close-to-home future where idiocy, ignorance and stupidity run riot... even to the point where it is impossible to get anything done properly, or to even complain about it. And nothing works, ever.

Harry Salt (AKA Harry Tequila AKA Cardew Vascular) is an agent from a shadowy and secretive British government organisation. He is in Europe (now a singl, united nation) following a trail left by his recently-murdered colleague, desperately trying to figure out what he is investigating, why it happened, and what he can do about it. What makes this hard is the extreme levels of incompetence that hardline political correctness has led Europe into embracing. It is impossible to book a hotel room, make a phone call, catch a plane, hire a car, catch a train, etc, etc, without coming up against one hurdle or another. This of course lends itself to some laugh-out-loud funny situations where Harry must negotiate his way past imbeciles who are blissfully aware of their own stupidity or socially-detrimental disorders. At one point Harry must feign having no capacity for short term memory in order to catch a plane. I almost lost my stuff over this bit, and at more than a few other bits too... it's hilarious. Sometimes the situations our hero finds himself in go beyond belief, especially in the action-hero/death-defying moments, but for a novel as funny as this I'm always willing to up the ante on my suspension of disbelief.

As far as futuristic comedy detective-novels go, this is the easily the best I've read. It's good to see Rob Grant has well and truly broken away from Red Dwarf as it means we get interesting and hilarious novels like this (to date he has also written the novels Colony and Fat). Meanwhile, it's sad to think that his former co-writer, Doug Naylor, spent most of the past fifteen years pouring his creative talents into a Red Dwarf film project that never happened. The good news is... I got this book for $5. Super bargain. If you see it around, grab it and read it.