The Edge Online - Book Reviews: Christopher Fowler

Disturbia
Christopher Fowler
Warner Books paperback, 349 pages, £7.99
Published July 1997
ISBN 0751519103
Time Warner paperback, 349 pages, £5.99
Published November 1998
ISBN 075151909X
Review by Andrew Hedgecock (1997)

When neophyte journalist Vince Reynolds gets a commission for a piece on his favourite theme – class and power in London – he seeks a contact within the capital’s privileged elite to give him an insider’s perspective and a human interest angle. A photograph in The Tatler leads him to the Honourable Sebastian Wells, chairman of The League of Prometheus, a conspiratorial and quasi-mystical society; more secretive than the masons and politically to the right of The Monday Club. Vince begins to uncover the truth about the League’s activities and is forced into a terrifying battle of wits: Sebastian, an obsessive player of games, sets Vince ten cryptic puzzles to be solved against the clock, as a test of his knowledge of the more esoteric aspects of London – its arcane history, forgotten places and myths. Vince plays the game because failure or refusal to take part will result in the execution of himself and his friends.

On the surface, Disturbia is a weird hybrid of frenetic thriller, obscure trivia quiz and urban travelogue. If you can imagine a fusion of Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, Radio 4’s Round Britain quiz and Iain Sinclair’s Downriver you’ll be on roughly the right track. But the ingredients of this fictional salmagundi also include bravura pastiche, brittle satire and ironic moral fable. This is all crammed into a fairly conventional narrative structure, and it’s a testament to the authority and assurance of Fowler’s storytelling that it doesn’t all become a flabby and muddled mess.

At first, Disturbia appears to centre on a traditional class war between London’s disenfranchised (Vince’s allies include hookers, dealers, street people and a group of eccentric insomniacs) and the ruling class. But the moral and political streams beneath the surface turn out to be much trickier to navigate than that; there are several layers of irony. Fowler is never tempted to preach, and the book can be enjoyed by readers who subscribe to Sam Goldwyn’s celebrated adage: ‘messages are for Western Union’. It’s an expressive and invigorating portrait of the vanity, moral disengagement, shallowness and political stagnation of the capital, a moral fable about the way we live now. Fowler contemplates the adaptability of the establishment, the seductive nature of power and the compromises people make to survive life in the city. And he performs a remarkable feat of narrative control: neither the themes, gags, puzzles nor pell-mell pace of the plot obscure his rich evocation of places and the specificity of his people. They may be archetypes, but you can imagine many of them having lives beyond the principles they are used to illustrate.

I’ve heard it suggested that Fowler produces reader friendly remixes of Iain Sinclair by doing away with the exacting linguistic precision and minatory scouring of the city. Clearly, the two writers share an obsessive interest in the dark side of London life – the city’s hidden geography, moral ambiguities, secret subcultures and concealed networks of power. But, in terms of style and approach, a more apposite comparison is with Evelyn Waugh, an acknowledged influence. There’s the detached treatment of moral ambiguity, picaresque plotting and merciless, brittle wit you find in Waugh’s early satires like Decline and Fall and Handful of Dust. There are thematic similarities too: Waugh’s black comedies created vivid snapshots of the frivolity and cynicism of England between the wars, and Fowler’s bleakly humorous thrillers highlight the social decay beneath the stylish surfaces of London in the 1990s.

The rendition of the thrills and threats of London after dark is flawless; and the depiction of Vince’s reaction to his life-threatening situation – switching from relentless commitment to his quest to helpless sense of despair and inability to act – is totally convincing. Throughout his stories Fowler has been a virtuoso of the sudden shift from comedy to horror, frequently developing comic rapport between characters only to have it shattered by a startling act of violence. And in spite of the fact you’re half expecting them, Fowler’s killings always give you a jolt. He’s a pretty adept genre bender too, playing with the tropes, conventions and stereotypes of a variety of forms. He flirts with the clichés of horror B-movies and classic detective novels: Sebastian, for example, is the stereotypically charming but dangerous chairman of a stereotypically conspiratorial secret society. But this stuff is all very cool, knowing and ironic, and as much an aspect of Fowler’s relish for game playing as the ten abstruse London puzzles. Speaking of which . . .

I have to confess that, had I been in Vince’s predicament, I’d have been rubbed out by the League of Prometheus on the first puzzle. Well, we can’t all be potential Guardian crossword compilers. But, to be positive, I did discover who the great social architect Berthold Lubetkin designed a pool for, and learned of the connection between a blue flower and London NW11. Disturbia is a cleverly contrived, elegantly written and enjoyable thriller tapping into the horror just below the surface of the lives millions of us lead. Highly recommended.