After finishing Wodicka’s All Shall Be Well…, which I addressed at length in my last post, I moved directly on to the dark Edwardian mystery, The Somnambulist. Jonathan Barnes, an Oxford grad and contributer to the Times Literary Supplement, has made his debut with a wonderfully weird book. At first I thought I was in for a Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell sort of tale, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. The Somnambulist manages instead to be hilarious at moments, absurd at times, and intriguing overall.
Edward Moon, illusionist and part-time crime-solver, is bored with his life. He hasn’t had a good mystery to solve in quite a while. He and his “Watson” — in this case an eight-foot tall mute who writes on a chalkboard (and can’t spell a damn thing correctly) — are quickly dragged from their torpor when a circus freak called the Human Fly commits a murder. Sound bizarre? You don’t know the half of it. Among the many despicable characters in this book are a man who claims to know the future because he’s “lived it,” a brothel full of mutant prostitutes (among whom Moon himself has a few favorites), and an incredibly hate-able albino.
It’s Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently books, though set in the world of Doyle, as told by a pleasantly bombastic and wholly unreliable narrator (whose identity remains a secret till the end of the story). To dust off an old adage, “There’s something in it for everyone.” And that’s not something I say often — in fact, I loathe cliches as much as the next writer.
The Somnambulist is due out from William Morrow, a Harper Collins imprint, in February of 2008. Though naturally you could track a copy down in the UK, where it’s been out all year. Once more, damn you Brits for getting all the good stuff first!
