Seventy-Two Virgins, by Boris Johnson
If writing were any sort of qualification for being Mayor of London, then Boris would be the obvious choice. Seventy-Two Virgins, his 2004 story of a terrorist plot to murder the US President during a state visit to Britain, is terrific.
It's important to say right at the start that the novel is unpretentious in literary terms: there is no attempt here to persuade you the novel rises above genre, no great emotional subtleties, no lovely, effortful writing - none of that. It's a fairly straightforward page-turning thriller on the familiar pattern, a large cast of characters being introduced in fairly quick succession, sometimes by their full names,
It was going to be a beautiful day, thought Eric William Kinloch Onyeama, as he walked across Lambeth Bridge.
with minimal interruption of the action. But I only say fairly straightforward because it's not entirely like that. For a start, it's fun: this is that rare thing, a comic thriller, and one of the reasons for its sheer pageturnability is the steady current of Johnson's humour, his joshingly affectionate view of London and all who sail in her. There's plenty of social observation, and a fair amount of political satire:
If a heartless politician were to engage in gratuitous political point-scoring, he might note that Dean was cared for by a Substance Abuse Outreach Worker (£25,000 pa), a Crime Prevention Detached Youth Project Worker (£31,000), a Burglary Reduction Worker (£23,000), a Probation Officer (£26,000), a Vehicle Theft Reduction Worker (£28,000 plus cars) and a representative of DYSPEL, a state-funded body that sees to the needs of dyslexic young offenders (£36,000).
The novel is certainly not politically correct: Diane Abbott and those others who've accused Johnson of racism would feel thoroughly confirmed in their views by his depiction of a London traffic warden, although to be fair to him, this portrayal is little different, and arguably more sympathetically drawn, that, say, Little Miss Jocelyn's. But without a doubt, Johnson's world is very like that of Kingsley Amis.
One of the remarkable things about his style is how much it sounds like him, always a sign of a good writer I think (although I suppose you have to know them, at least from the telly, to gauge this) and something I aim for myself. So it's good, jolly company all the way, with typical hints of the highbrow given in surprising cultural references. What other writer would talk about
the Palio of Trafalgar Square
for instance? That'll be the Palio that's been cleaned up and shut down by the Mayor Johnson is currently trying to oust, Ken Livingstone, with his part-pedestrianisation of the Square.
Was he transported on wings of angels to the soft bowers that await the martyrs in the island of the blessed?... Does he eat honeydew and drink the milk of Paradise? and finally, is this menu brought to him by seventy-two black-eyed virgins, so decorous and submissive as to assuage all the sexual indignities of this earth?
Or has he by now eaten his pitiful ration of raisins?
My friends, I have not the faintest idea. There, as they say in German, I am over-questioned. No narrator, whatever omniscience he may claim, can give you an answer to that one.
But I have my suspicions.
There's a decent caricature of George W. Bush in here, a knockabout vindication of solid British muddling-through, a subversive, mocking take on suicide bombers, an implicit deprecation of any sort of bleeding-hearted disloyalty and of the gesturings of the left and wobbly centre, plus a brilliantly embarrassing exposé of a certain brand of fatuous anti-Americanism, spoken here by an awful Tory MP and TV personality called, oddly enough, Chester. Most of all, though, this is a cor-blimey cracking read, a book that sustains tension magnificently and delays climax superbly, and kept me reading late into the night to find out what happened next, next and next, all the way to the end.
As I said before, if writing this sort of thing were any kind of indication of mayoral potential, then Boris would be as firm an electoral favourite in London as Robert Mugabe is in his manor. But it isn't. I won't say "unfortunately": we only narrowly missed getting Jeffrey Archer, remember? The thing I don't get is why Boris wants to be Mayor at all. Why not stick to his true vocation?
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