Very DIRTY stuff (Dirty Tricks - Michael Dibdin)

Member Name: chris105

Product:	Dirty Tricks - Michael Dibdin
Date:	22/08/01 (173 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: unbelievably funny, an ingenious and well thought-out murder story

Disadvantages: ?

I'm in a foul mood. I'm working fourteen hour days just two days after returning from a week's holiday abroad, thus immediately draining any energy I had built up in said holiday. I survived an assassination attempt by a Dubliner cook who decided to try his hand at food poisoning on this poor man. And I'm at war with my credit card company (not for defaulting on payment [this time!], I hasten to add, but merely due to said bank's incompetence).

So bear with me if I ramble somewhat. Oh dear, I did, didn't I? But you're here to read about Michael Dibdin's book, so off we go. First of all, DIRTY TRICKS is not an Aurelio Zen mystery - it's a sui generis novel written in 1991 by this wonderfully quirky author, a British with extensive knowledge of the way of life of Italians. Occasionally he writes non-Zen books, and this is probably one of his best ones. Dibdin fans will be surprised to learn that DIRTY TRICKS is not based in Italy, indeed its setting is the very British Oxford.

The narrator, a relic of the sixties who still rides a bike as his sole means of transport and survives by teaching English to foreign students at a school run by snob capitalist Clive, barges into the genteel life of Karen and Dennis, a middle-class couple with society aspirations. When he "seduces" (the book's blurb uses the word, honest - it sounds so Jane Austen) Karen, events precipitate leading on to Dennis' murder. Slowly but surely, we are led to see how the unthinkable becomes the inevitable, and there is a second murder which drastically changes the fortunes of our not so intrepid narrator. He gives new meaning to the phrase "upwardly mobile". A third murder, the cherry on the proverbial gateau, seals his fate. Or will the cogs of justice deal the blind-folded lady a sidelining blow, thereby saving our (anti-)hero?

You should know me better than to think I'll give away anything more - doing s
o would be both presumptuous on my side (a story artfully constructed by the author cannot be done justice to in a few lines) and unfair to the reader. Suffice it to say that it's a darn good yarn (hehe...) that should fall under the famous "page-turner" category.


Who should read it? Anyone interested in crime stories with a twist, in intelligent renderings of the meanderings of the criminal (and not so criminal) mind, as well as - indeed, especially! - anyone with a sense of humour.

For that is the key to this book - the wild, wicked, dirty humour. It is at the same time funny in a macabre way and gross. It has the shock value of Bill Clinton ascending to the Papacy (sort of, anyway... you get the gist). The sex scenes in the book, as the Sunday Telegraph review posted on the back cover so pointedly puts it, "are very dirty indeed (and, rarest of achievements, disgracefully funny as well)". Nothing much is left to the imagination, but the effect on the reader is more "Ally McBeal" than "Lolita" - it's a side-splittingly funny book. You have to read it to believe it. It's something like what Kay and Alk could write if they jointly penned a novel... now think about that!

Dibdin has this uncanny ability of writing in an excellent flowing style the most intricate and well-thought-out murder stories that would make Jessica Fletcher pale with envy. [Well, not really, I happen to be a Jessica-phile, but that's another story and another op.] As in his Zen books, the murder inquiry is never merely a storytelling device to show off impressive language. He actually has a story to tell, one that would be riveting sit-on-the-edge-of-your-chair stuff even without the condiments. But the condiments are there, and they make any Dibdin reading such a treat. He has an enviable nonchalance in his writing, and totally absorbs the reader from the onset with original language. His humour is unique, a
nd gives that added flavour to his writing.

DIRTY TRICKS is, quite simply, one of the best books I've read recently - and it isn't just because I got it at such a discount (GBP 2.95 from Bookends, Charing Cross Road, London, if you're interested). You absolutely have to meet the narrator, who's also the protagonist of the story. He is totally unreliable, self-centred, criminal, machiavellian, devious, and yet we adore him - he's our hero from beginning to end, although he should be villain number one.

Honestly (this will provoke fits of hysteria in certain dooyoo-ers, I know) DIRTY TRICKS is what THE WASP FACTORY could have been if Banks were up to Dibdin's class. [So there, I've said it, go on and hate me. Small aside: I happen to like some of Banks' stuff, he's a terrific writer, but the quality of his work is so uneven. Sorry mate, but Dibdin beats you anyday - okay, perhaps with COMPLICITY you drawed, but that's it.] Remember Frank from THE WASP FACTORY? Well, DIRTY TRICKS' narrator is him, only better, larger, more devious, and frankly more intelligent and amusing ... and shocking, too.

I'm still in a foul mood, so I'm stopping here and now. I hope you weren't expecting a very long op, but I believe that I've covered the essential DIRTY TRICKS, as it were. I dare you to prove me wrong - read it (the book, that is, not the op - which you've read anyway if you're reading this, unless you cheated) then confront me. I could be right, or you could be wrong. Take your pick.

Just follow this word of advice: if you want to have a GOOD (note the emphasis) read, and if you don't mind some rough stuff (in the sense of dirty, not violent), then you absolutely have to read DIRTY TRICKS.

I nominate the book for a crown.

Dirty Tricks
Michael Dibdin
published by Faber and Faber
GBP 5.99

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