Probably the funniest book I've read, it literally had me in tears laughing - an extremely rare feat for a book (at least for me)! ( )

A fast moving comedy thriller, chock full of influences but with a distinctive Red dwarf feel, not least in a seemingly hapless hero Harry Salt. Harry Salt has other aliases including Mr Tequila, in fact everything but the Lime, and the plot is very Third Man-ish. Its frenetic pace and endless pain for the hero also reminded me of Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male.

I enjoyed it for its pace and dystopia, but found the grumpy old man stuff a little tedious - and I am a GOM. There is only so much you can read about footwear made of vegetables and ways in which train seats are uncomfortable before you start to lose the will to live - felt like padding. It's also not one for the detective story purists, as this is a first person narrative, and as we are supposed to know what Harry knows, it really is cheating to reveal the fact that he can kill a man with one strike, with his bare hands, right at the end of the book. ( )

This book reminded me a lot of Jennifer Goverment by Max Berry. It is set in a not too distant future where the United States of Europe have made it illegal to fire someone based on their incompetence. But this scenario is just the backdrop for a funny quickpaced espionage thriller.
While I could have done without some of the rants and instead would have wanted some more background on the whole espionage and futuristic setting, I enjoyed the book and it's premises. 8 points for originality and readability. The end seems to be set up for a sequel..

Fun little satire of a book. The sort of thing that I would recommend reading on holiday - not too taxing but a good read to have sat outside in the sunshine with a nice drink. Semi-reminiscent of the Red Dwarf series in the sense that it shares a lot of the same humour - mostly simple and silly observations about people. Still, rather entertaining and worth picking up. ( )

No-holds-barred, all-out mayhem from one half of the writing team who brought us Red Dwarf. ( )