The Satsuma Complex by Bob Mortimer
About the author
Bob Mortimer was born in Middlesbrough in 1959, the youngest of four sons. He trained as a solicitor before a chance encounter with Vic Reeves in the 1980s led to a successful career in comedy as half of duo Reeves and Mortimer. His screen credits include Shooting Stars, Big Night Out, Catterick and most recently BBC2's Gone Fishing. His memoir, And Away…, published in 2021. It became the bestselling memoir of the year, was named Times and Sunday Times Humour Book of the Year, and was shortlisted for Non-fiction Book of the Year at the National Book Awards. The Satsuma Complex is his first novel.
Review
The Satsuma Complex by Bob Mortimer review – the sleuth is out there. Killian Fox, October 17, 2022. The Guardian
The much-loved comic proves adept at noirish fiction in a debut whose surrealist humour sets it apart.
Gary Thorn is in the middle of investigating a serious criminal case in south London involving police corruption, domestic violence, possibly even murder, when he stops in the street to speak to a passing squirrel. He tells the squirrel what he’s planning to do next and the creature, as ventriloquised by Gary, tries to talk him out of it. “I would think around that decision a bit deeper than you obviously have,” it says.
This is how the comedian Bob Mortimer writes a crime novel: with squirrel interludes, recurring duck gags and a private eye with a fondness for novelty socks. The latter is an acquaintance of Gary’s who runs out on him one night in the pub, leaving behind a USB stick in the shape of a corncob and is later reported dead under suspicious circumstances. On the same night, Gary is also abandoned by a mysterious young woman with a button nose and severe fringe with whom he tries to flirt over steak and chips.
Gary is not a real detective. He a shy legal assistant at a Peckham solicitor’s office who panics at the first sign of danger and only persists with the case because he fancies the mysterious befringed woman who turns out to be embroiled in it.
Mortimer, himself a shy Peckham solicitor before he became a comedian, proves quite deft at writing crime fiction: the plot has a familiar noirish shape, complete with potential femme fatale, but there are enough surprises and reversals to keep it rattling along.
But it’s the details that really set this book apart. Off the wall doesn’t quite cover it. What other fictional sleuth would write “large bananas” in tiny letters on an architrave in his office to cheer himself up at work? Or assign the names Zak Briefcase and Lengthy Parsnips to a pair of dogs he passes in the street? Fans of Mortimer’s surrealist turns on Would I Lie to You?, or his internet sketch show Train Guy, won’t be disappointed. Nor will crime fiction devotees, if only they can get over the talking squirrels.