Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interestingly odd, 8 May 2004
My first Robert Rankin, and i have bought more. Can there be a better review than that?Delciously twisted. Following multiple characters, each from multiple perspectives seems to be a lot to keep track of, but its only when you finish the book that you realise its what you have done. Its a kind of bizzare whodunnit, but not one where you spend the whole book trying to guess who it was yourself. Amazingly you didnt even know the truth till the end!
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Woodbine's last case?, 4 Jan 2006
`Waiting For Godalming' is Robert Rankin's 21st novel, and also one of his best. The story stars self-styled last of the hardboiled gumshoe detectives Lazlo Woodbine (some call him Laz), a character first introduced in `Armageddon 3: The Suburban Book of the Dead', and who also took the lead role in `The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag'. If you're not already familiar with the character suffice to say that for reasons too obscure to go into (but possibly tied into the fact that he is utterly insane) Lazlo only works in first person detective genre cliché, only ever uses 4 sets (his office, a bar, an alleyway, and a rooftop for the climax) and comes complete with trench-coat, fedora, a beautiful dame who always knocks him out, and a talking sprout called Barry who lives in his head (I told you he was mad). `Waiting For Godalming' sees Lazlo take on his greatest case as, following up some of the blasphemous backstory of the Armageddon books, he is hired by God's wife to find out who murdered her husband. Due to his limit of four sets building an entire novel around Lazlo can be tricky, so Rankin sensibly gives half the narrative to his thieving brother Icarus, who ends up embroiled in a mad scheme to liberate a drug that can allow humans to see the angels and demons that walk amongst them.
`Waiting For Godalming' has all the insane ideas one would expect from Rankin, and is also stuffed with great comedy scenes, loads of quality old toot and running gags (some of which, like the cab drivers Knowlegde, is even new!). Sometimes Rankin's novels can fall apart at the finale when the author fails to provide a proper conclusion, but here everything is nicely resolved as Lazlo gets the traditional detectives wrapping up speech, and the theme of the two brothers relationship is nicely handled. Rankin heavily hints that this is Lazlo Woodbine's last case (and let's face it - how can you top solving who murdered God?), and if so this is a worthy finale. Great stuff - though as ever with Rankin you may well want to check out the earlier books first, or this may simply be too crazed for you to cope with
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Silent nite *was* cleverer, 5 Dec 2001
By A Customer
If one pardons the obvious blasphemies, than Robert Rankin's "Waiting for Godalming" is, fundamentally, a good novel. It contains all the hallmarks of a classic Rankin thriller; it has the well-drawn characters, the blindingly fast plot situations, the groan-worthy running gags, and the complex switch-backs and double-crosses. No-one has equaled Rankin's use of surrealism, creativity, occult, SF, fantasy and the right jigger of humour to produce a decidedly fun novel. Rankin *is* the Father of Far-Fetched Fiction; comic fantasy seems to be too much of a restraining description of the Rankinist genre.
"Waiting for Godalming" is possibly the most logical Rankin novel produced. It is a Lazlo Woodbine novel so one can expect the talking of toot, the gratuitous violence, the drugs & the sex, the Phillip Marlowe double-speak, and the persistent interruptions made by the Time-Sprout Barry, a cabbage which appears to be taking residence inside of Lazlo's skull.
"Waiting For Godalming" is quite clearly a parody; of all the pulp noir that has ever been produced in the name of crime fiction. But it also features the 'death' of God (not ot give anything away), which might make even the most stalwart religious rebel slightly anxious.
"Waiting for Godalming" seems to owe as much to "The Matrix" as it does to Irvine Welsh's "Trainspotting."
This is Rankin, remember. As quick and inventive as the novel it is, you have been forewarned.
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