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Neither Vicodin nor Adders
By bukkhead | March 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW: ‘THE GUN SELLER’
by Hugh Laurie
368 pages
Published by Washington Square Press, 1998.
I don’t know why I have such difficulty writing book reviews. Maybe it’s because I don’t have a mind for details. I do tend to notice things; I just forget them very quickly afterwards. Maybe it’s because I spent all those years in school, studying books, writing as I went, and now I find I can’t recapture that gestalt, since I don’t like to take notes while I read for fun. At any rate, I’m wasting time, and words, now to avoid writing about The Gun Seller. Which is a shame, because it’s a not half-bad book.
When I saw it on the table in the store, I admit it, I was drawn by the cover. Yes, I judge books by their covers. Well, I judge my appeal to try them. I’m never going to say, “this book wasn’t good, except the cover was excellent, so 4 stars.” No, not exactly. But on the flip notion, I will judge a book by its author, though that’s more of my English-major-past coming through. I was taught, after all, that a book is good before you read it (if it’s a “good book.”) and your job is to figure out how it is good. This one is by Hugh Laurie, which at the time was strike one.
Here’s yet another book, I thought, written by some actor (House, if you don’t know) who thinks he can write. Still, I was curious, and this was an actor who’s worked I did, actually, like. And then I finally remembered that Hugh Laurie’s career began in comedy, writing as well as acting, and so the strike was erased from the record. You see, Hugh is British, and they don’t play baseball in England, so the baseball analogies fall apart. But they do play cricket. I don’t think I know any cricket analogies.
Finally one day in a fit of pique I just bought the damned thing and started reading it. It’s the story of an ex-military man-for-hire who gets caught up in a murder mystery complete with a femme fetale. Typical, really. What’s the point of saying more? Actually, it’s a bit more complicated than that, even before the beginning, to Laurie’s credit, so well bowled Hugh (I think that might be a cricket analogy. Or petanque).
Laurie stuffs the novel with all manner of stylistic of cliché, but it’s obvious from the start that he’s well aware of them, having fun with them, making fun of them. That’s going to be the chief attraction to the book. There’s a gentle message on the savagery of arms dealing (yawn), some slight nods to broken hearts (another yawn) and a bit of punch-and-chase adventure (snore). Maybe they’ll make it into a movie. Until then, have fun with the language—my feeling is, this is a first novel, and if Laurie is allowed to cultivate this style, he might actually write some real zingers.
And if not, there’s other books to have fun reading and difficulty reviewing.
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