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Mitchell is a hard man. He's not a kid; he's in his mid-forties, a heavy drinker with a long history of criminal associations. Just out of prison after doing three years for an assault he cannot remember having committed, a sentence he served in full to be free of parole officers and restrictions once he's out, he has no plans to return to jail in the foreseeable future. But his old mates are more interested in Mitchell's considerable talent for mayhem than with encouraging him to tread the straight and narrow. It seems to him like a good idea to take the job as a handyman he's offered at the Holland Park mansion inhabited by an ageing film star and her seriously odd butler. The film star may be twenty years older than Mitchell, but she's not dead yet and Mitchell proves himself handy in more ways than one. LONDON BOULEVARD first appeared in the UK in 2001, the same year as THE GUARDS, in which Jack Taylor came on the scene. The two books have much in common, sharing the same stylistic tricks, the lists, the absolute bone-dry verbal spareness and particularly the unsparing toughness of attitude that made Jack Taylor so extraordinary a creation. There are differences, however. Mitchell is not Jack Taylor - he is even bleaker and far more violent. LONDON BOULEVARD has its roots in American film noir, in particular Sunset Boulevard. This is not realism so much as a bleak fantasy of alienation in which the real suspense is not how badly will things turn out but whether Mitchell will be left with anything at all when it is all over. I gather that this novel is being issued in the US after ten years because, as the cover announces, it is "now a major motion picture," one starring Keira Knightley as a "reclusive young actress" and Colin Farrell as our anti-hero. This does not bode well. Unless they can put about forty years on Ms Knightley, shoot the thing in black and white, and resurrect Billy Wilder to direct, I'd read the book. Even if they could, I'd read the book - LONDON BOULEVARD is a not a cinematic experience but a substantial literary achievement.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, December 2009
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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