2020/053: Slippery Creatures -- KJ Charles

Ought he apologise for coming in his mouth? Would this be a good moment to restart the conversation about where Kim had learned to use a knife? Thank God they were British. He took a deep breath. “Cup of tea?” [p.72]

Will Darling is a veteran of the First World War, down on his luck and without prospects -- until his friend Maisie suggests that he contact his elderly uncle, who promptly expires, bequeathing Will his disorderly bookshop. Which would seem to be remarkably good fortune, except that Will is pestered by various unsavoury parties who believe he has information that they want. Perhaps his mild-mannered bookselling uncle was involved in a more dangerous business ...

Enter Kim Secretan, jaded aristo and (as Will quickly discovers) a good man to have at your back in a fight. Easy on the eye, too. But can Will trust him for more than ten pages? The answer is almost certainly 'no'. Except that Kim keeps revealing layers of himself, unexpected skills, and -- dash it -- a charming fiancee, Phoebe, who wants what's best for Kim, her best friend.

It's a fast-moving plot, full of reversals and abrupt wrong-footings, redolent of pulp thrillers in the Buchan mould: secret societies with handy identifying tattoos, a traitor in the War Office, several elaborate schemes for conveying secret messages, and moderate violence. Being a novel by K J Charles, it also features anti-Establishment sentiments, rage at the Government (how very like the home life of this reader, et cetera) and competent people falling reluctantly in love (or something like it). Will is stubborn, loyal and not afraid of violence: Kim is slippery and untrustworthy but sound at heart.

I didn't warm to this quite as much as some of Charles' other pulp-inspired works. Perhaps it was the lack of a supernatural element, as in Spectred Isle: perhaps the repeated reversals (and Will's justifiable refusal to give Kim the benefit of the doubt) felt a little too emotionally bleak: perhaps Will's cynicism was just a little too familiar from the inside of my own head, in these dark days. But I did enjoy the novel, and I'm looking forward to the next in the planned trilogy.