The Edge Online - Reviews: Anthony Frewin

London Blues
Anthony Frewin
No Exit paperback, 303 pages, £6.99
Published March 1997
ISBN 1874061734
Review by Gerald Houghton (1997)

Scandal is integral to this, the novel début of Anthony Frewin, assistant to Stanley Kubrick, writer on the Kennedy assassination, and regular in the pages of the conspiracy nut’s journal of choice, Lobster.

The unnamed narrator discovers, buried in the heart of his ‘full uncut’ bootleg of Get Carter, a copy of The Boy Friend’s Surprise Visit, a typically tawdry sixties Brit porn-loop. He swiftly recognises this black & white Prick-A-Dilly Production as the work of Tim Purdom, a one time home-made porn producer. But today the only thing anyone knows for sure about him is that they know nothing: Tim Purdom vanished thirty years ago.

The bulk of the book is penned (from an unidentified source) by the pornographer-in-chief himself, detailing sixties Soho in all its sleazy glory; the innocuous shop fronts and darkened back rooms stuffed with hardcore at a price. And how Purdom chances into shooting still smut before earning his spurs with those crude shorts of friends and acquaintances getting very friendly and very well acquainted. But Tim’s circle has ways of being more than they seem, and in particular one Stephen Ward who approaches the youngster to screen loops at his sex parties. Ward begins feeding Tim performers, and by the time anyone grasps the osteopath’s far-reaching connections, it’s almost too late.

There are two books here. The first is a fascinating expose of the porn rackets in their heyday. We (explicitly) follow the technical intricacies, from finding willing cocks‘n’cunts to a sufficiently crooked processing lab for an after hours job. The educated Tim tries to introduce a bit of wit into his work, but the bottom line is still all Randy French Maid and Schoolgirl Frolics.

The problems set in once the novel gives way to the conspiracy that, one senses, really interests its author. Unfortunately that’s the half of the book that refuses to spark; London Blues never achieves escape velocity. We get a hint when he shoehorns in James Hanratty for no ostensible purpose – it doesn’t work, and nor do the intrigues that seek to rope Purdom to the whole Profumo debacle. Restrained by the niceties of fact, Frewin can only cast his antihero in a minor role, leaving the scandal itself an unnecessary third limb. The twin strands never bed down and it’s ennui and not suspense that sets in. Frewin never quite resolves his contemporary bookends with the remainder, and the end is more irksome than enigmatic.

Whatever his considerable credentials, Frewin is simply not a good enough writer to pull this off. Instead of the intrigue he promises, we’re left with an only half realised page-turner on our hands. There is certainly a great book to be written about the Soho porn industry, but this, unfortunately, is not it.