- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd; First Edition edition (5 Jun 1997)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 022404396X
- ISBN-13: 978-0224043960
- Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.6 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 1.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,556,690 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
By the author of "A White Merc with Fins", this is the sharp and comic story of a modern man in all kinds of trouble.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Potentially an interesting and exciting setting for a novel: post communist, gangster-mafia ruled Russia.
Having just finished a long biography of Lenin I thought this would tie in nicely and zip the story of Russia up to date. Unfortunately the funniest moments were when the protagonist is sitting in his car (strangely called a VW-Porsche) on the M25 and gets involved in road rage attack. Too much seems to be set in the UK.
I understand that this is re-written from an original novel which was turned into a screen play; after tightening and streamlining the story to fit the movie, the author decided to re-write the novel.
Some of the vignettes in the story made me laugh out loud and I was enjoying the read until just about three quarter way through when the screw began to tighten. Suddenly the story came to a natural conclusion, but the words carried on for about 20 more pages. The scene I beleived I had been led towards never came. Then I realised that it was coming but only after all the other elements of the story, all the loose ends and bits of fluff were to be roped in. Too evidently, the writer tried to force all the elements of the story into a slick synchronicity, which you can imagine will work in a film, but in the novel it just drags on and on.
It has some good observations about the 30-something protagonist's inception into middle age incorporating his relationship with his girlfriend. The view from inside his drunken business-man's head is funny: He finds himself at a business dinner, equally enamoured with his girlfriend of many years and the Russian interpreter whom he met minutes before, and while simultaneuously waiting to be scolded by the girlfriend, enticed into doing something reprehensible with the interpreter and assaulted by his Russian Host, he attempts to pull off the deal, blind drunk.
For the first three quarters it's worth the effort. Borrow it from the library.
Format:Paperback
It's the traffic on the M25 that finally pushes Peter Thompson over the edge and into the adventure of a lifetime. He goes from the typical life of the typical balding, fattening thirty-something into a life of high-intruigue, international organised crime, crooked CIA operatives and seriously sexy russian mafia princesses.
He goes from looking at life over the bonnet of a four-door saloon to looking at it down the length of a gun barrel, from various ends at various points in the novel.
Rancid Aluminium is an excellent read, funny and exciting. Some review would have you believe that it is inferior to James Hawes' excellent "White Merc...", but it's not.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Garbage! Where does one begin with a novel like this? Well, it's extremely badly written, for a start. Ungrammatical (as in Hawes appears unable to write a proper grammatical sentence, which one might think an impediment to a career as a novelist but, apparently not). Very, very unfunny (as in contrived, Carry On style 'humour' of the most naff variety). But if you thought Benny Hill was a master of subtle, sophisticated wit, you might quite like it. Plot (none), characterisation (developed by a child) ... should I go on?...
All-in-all, a truly shameful exercise.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Rancid waste of time
This book is the literal equivalent of walking for many days through the desert, to come upon an oasis which unfortunately turns out to be Middlesbrough. Read more
Published on 20 Mar 2007 by Somnambulist
'Rancid' would have been a better title
I started reading expecting it to be something of a comic novel. I soon realised that it was devoid of even slight humour. Read more
Published on 21 Feb 2006 by D. Hill
Absolutely Dreadful
Could someone please tell me on what page is this book funny? Dreadful stuff.
Published on 29 July 2004 by D. Hill
where is the option for no stars?
Unfunny, baddly written, badly edited rubbish. The so called humour is so strained and so childish it almost beggars belief. Simply dreadful.
Published on 14 April 2000
Fast & enjoyable. British humour in a rotten Euroland scene
A new Ken Follett with a touch of deranged British humour. A mixt of spontaneous and hilarious comedy combined with a middle-class step into the 90' Euro-Russian mob scene. Read more
Published on 24 Feb 2000
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