My kinda work environment (Incompetence - Rob Grant)

Member Name: freediveheaven

Product:	Incompetence - Rob Grant
Date:	01/01/05 (82 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Funny

Disadvantages: None

No matter what your political views on the question of Europe one thing is certain, after reading this novel by Rob Grant you would be firmly in the “no” camp, in fact you would be so far to the right of the “no” camp you would be in danger of being in the “no no” camp and we all know that two negatives make a positive. The only exception to this rule would be if you were the sort of person who was totally useless at their job, the sort of person who would bring a whole new meaning to the word inept, someone who is in fact incompetent at their job. Then you would definitely be in the “yes” camp, you would relish the fact that your job with Network Rail was safe and you would be confident in your ability to rise to the highest political office in the land.

In the United States of Europe Article 13199 of the Pan-European Constitution states that “No person shall be prejudiced from employment in any capacity, at any level, by reason of age, race, creed or incompetence” Nirvana, you cannot be sacked for being bad at your job, in fact it is an accepted way of life.

The story opens with the paragraph “The flight was uneventful enough, except the pilot accidentally touched down at a slightly wrong airport and forgot to lower the landing gear, so we left the plane by way of the landing chute and I lost my shoes” Welcome to the world of Detective Harry Salt who works in secret for the European security authorities. Working within a cell system he only has contact with two other agents, when out of the blue he is summoned to a face-to-face meeting with one of them in Rome he begins the hunt for a killer that takes him on a dangerous and frustrating journey across Europe.

He arrives too late to meet his contact, who unfortunately got into a lift and opted for the 33rd floor, unfortunately there were only 18 floors in the building and the lift did an impressive impersonation of the Apollo space probe before descending to earth. His contact Kingferm was investigating the death of a number of famous people including politicians who were poisoned at a dinner function. Now in a Europe where incompetence is a way of life trying to track down the cause of this is almost impossible indeed the four reports on the matter failed to agree on any of the vents including the date of the dinner.

In such a climate a competent killer can work completely anonymously and it is this that Salt has to battle against.

Rob Grant has produced a funny and engrossing novel, it is not really a detective story as each chapter sees Salt experiencing one set back after another without ever really finding any clues, the scenario of a Europe riddled with incompetence allows the author to introduce some great characters such as the Italian police officer with anger management problems and the waiter with turets syndrome.

The reader is also drawn into some nightmare situations such as the legal assistant who is downsized by his company while visiting a prisoner in jail and is unable to leave the prison as his pass no longer works however as he was not arrested in the first place no one recognises the fact that he is actually in prison therefore he has no sentence to serve and no hope of release. Whilst reading this book you cannot fail to share some of the frustrations that Salt encounters especially as he is pretty good at his job he just never gets the chance to show it. All of this in a Europe where shoes are made from dried vegetable skins.

Whilst in no way is this a page turner I would recommend it as an entertaining read, it has some very funny moments and at times the style of humour reminded me of a Ben Elton novel, and at 290 pages it will take a couple of days to read. Rob Grant has also had two other novels published, Colony and Backwards however it is his writing on Red Dwarf for which he is most famous.

The rrp for the hardback version is £9.99 however I bought it a couple of months ago for £6.99 from Amazon. You can now pick it up in paperback for £3.99 from Amazon or from £2.40 used.

Hope you enjoyed my review and I hope you have a prosperous new year.

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