The tale of a stumped policeman, a third man, and a well-placed shot.
My latest novel One Man Down is the sequel to my comic murder mystery A Brand to Die For. Both novels, however, are stand-alone and can be read independently of each other.
The year is 1984. The legendary comic Tommy Cooper has died on stage (quite literally). And Angus Lovejoy and Brian Finkle are gloriously oblivious to it all as they strive to enthral the nation with their television commercials for the advertising agency Gordon Deedes Rutter. But all is not as rosy as it might seem in the frenetic world of Soho. Following a disastrous presentation to a manufacturer of diarrhoea tablets, Lovejoy and Finkle let off steam by playing cricket for an old school friend – but in doing so, stumble upon a nest of vipers involving a gay vicar, a small-time antique fraudster, a photographer, and blackmail. There can only be one outcome and it’s going to entail murder.
The backdrop to the novel is one that required no research, as I lived through the 1980s as an advertising copywriter, so I was able to draw on my experiences and memories of that period. Indeed, some of the advertising campaigns described in the book are based on real campaigns that my art director Colin Underhay and I created both at art college and at our first advertising agency in the mid 80s.
The epigraph at the front of the book from Mario Puzo’s The Godfather in many ways sums up the almost nonchalant manner in which murder is committed as if it were an everyday and perfectly normal occurrence. It reads as follows: “There are things that have to be done and you do them and you never talk about them. You don’t try to justify them. They can’t be justified. You just do them. Then you forget it.” While the book may be very amusing in places, my intention was to juxtapose the comedy with a distinctly dark thread of immorality and hypocrisy that readers may find a touch disturbing.
I won’t elaborate any further for fear of giving too much away. As far as the humorous side of the novel is concerned, readers may be interested to know that some of the characters that appear are based very closely on real characters I knew who are sadly no longer with us. Most writers (and I include myself among them), are usually a bit cagey for good reason when quizzed on the subject of their characters and whether they resemble real people. In this case, I wanted to include a couple of people I knew as affectionate portraits. And I’m sure they’d have been more than happy to have been remembered in such a way.
Lou Hart, for instance, who makes an appearance as the owner of Bunjies, a cafe and live music venue in Litchfield Street, Soho was in fact a very close family friend. He was the shortest man I have ever known, being shorter than my mother who was barely five feet tall. But what he lacked in stature he more than made up for with enormous charisma. During the war he served in the Eighth Army in Africa and was almost certainly the only man serving whose feet were so small that the army couldn’t equip him with desert boots small enough. So for the duration of the war, he carried on his person a letter from his company commander allowing him to serve in brown brogues. Following the war, he won the Vernons Football pools and set himself up in business – eventually buying Bunjies. This cafe with its subterranean cellar would become one of the most iconic live music venues in London in the 60s. It was here that the likes of Al Stewart, David Bowie, Cat Stevens et al cut their teeth. And it was also here that one customer wasn’t let in until one of his mates had paid the entrance fee. His name was Bob Dylan.
Another character in the book is Robert Conway who is based on my brother’s colleague by the same name who was a barrister by day and would in the evening swap his wig and gown for stage makeup and perform stand-up comedy under the name Walter Zerlin junior. He would often share the bill with another talented comic – a very young Rick Mayal who he mentored. As well as performing, Robert was also a prolific writer and co-wrote ten farces – The Farndale Avenue Townswomen’s Guild productions. These were deliberately butchered productions of the classics in which everything that can go wrong does go wrong. In the very first cast was a lanky and amusing performer named Julian Clary. And in my book I contrive a scene in which Robert, Julian and others exchange banter in an Indian restaurant. Julian Clary very kindly agreed to read a couple of pages of his character’s dialogue and subsequently gave it his blessing. Robert also wrote and performed a piece entitled Running Around the Stage like a Lunatic in which he played 17 parts including a nun with a wooden leg. The production won the prestigious Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe and got him onto the Russell Harty Show. Robert died very suddenly and tragically at the tender age of 51. He was just beginning to get noticed as a writer and performer, and his obituary appeared in The Guardian. Had he survived, I’m convinced that he would have hung up his wig and gown permanently and made his name in the world of entertainment where he clearly belonged.
As you will gather from the title of the book, cricket also features in a couple of chapters.
(c) Alex Pearl
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About One Man Down:
The tale of a stumped policeman, a third man, and a well-placed shot.
It’s 1984. Princess Diana has just given birth to her second child. The legendary comic Tommy Cooper has died on stage (quite literally). And Angus Lovejoy and Brian Finkle are gloriously oblivious to it all as they strive to enthral the nation with their television commercials for the advertising agency Gordon Deedes Rutter. But all is not as rosy as it might seem in the frenetic world of Soho.
Following a disastrous presentation to a manufacturer of diarrhoea tablets, Lovejoy and Finkle let off steam by playing cricket for an old school friend – but in doing so, stumble upon a nest of vipers involving a gay vicar, a small-time antique fraudster, a photographer, and blackmail. There can only be one outcome and it’s going to entail murder.
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Read more from Alex Pearl on Writing.ie here.
