A load of balls??????? (The Stars' Tennis Balls - Stephen Fry)

Member Name: geordieger

Product:	The Stars' Tennis Balls - Stephen Fry
Date:	18/06/02 (279 review reads)
Rating:

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When looking for a good thriller I never imagined myself picking up a novel written by Stephen Fry, darling of the comedy world.

The book opens the scene in 1980, where Ned Maddstone has it all. He is the public schoolboy son of Sir Charles Maddstone, M.P., captain of the school cricket team, Headboy, all round nice guy, who has stumbled onto his first love, Portia, whilst in Hard Rock Cafe, on a school outing.

When he reads a schoolmate's(Ashley's)diary he could never imagine the outcome. As an act of public humiliation Ashley, another former schoolmate and Portia's cousin set Ned up to be caught by the police with a pocket-full of Cannabis. Unbeknown to them, Ned has on his possesion something far more sinister, resulting in his abduction.

When Ned finally reappears he is hell-bent on revenge, and coldly calculates each and every move.

This was, to me, a surprising novel. I had never thought of Stephen Fry as a thriller author before, memories of his appearances in Blackadder, Whose line is it anyway, and Jeeves and Wooster, had coloured my vision.

The plot is fantastically simple, and has been compaired to The Count of Monte Cristo. The writing style is as you would expect from the well-educated Fry, with descriptive prose that transport the reader into Ned's world easily. The philosophical side to the book can at times be a little challenging, but is necessary to enhance the plot.

As a thriller the description is not unnecessarily gory, hardly along the lines of Jeffrey Deaver or Patricia Cornwell, but it conveys the happenings well.

At first I found the first few chapters a bit slow, but once past this found that the novel drew me into Ned's experiences, and I did have trouble putting the book down. I think its a good piece of writing that concentrates on revenge as its theme, and describes beautifully how cold and calculating the human mind can be.

Perhaps one o
f the only criticism's I have about this book is that the ending is quite abrupt, Fry could have extended the 371 pages(paperback) to tie up the ends more, but it possibly leaves open the chance of a sequel.

This is well worth reading, and I want to leave you with a quote from the back cover of the book,

"Stephen Fry was born in the twentieth century and will die in the twenty-first. In the course of writing six books he has drunk twelve thousand cups of coffee, smoked one and a half million cigarettes and worn out nineteen pairs of trousers."

Just like I have writing this op!

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