Fripp, by Miles Tredinnick, was strongly recommended to me by a friend almost a year ago and, at that time, I very nearly bought it. I got as far as Amazon, then stopped just short of pressing the 'buy with one click' button. So, what caused me to chicken out? Well, in short, Tom Sharpe. Or, to be more precise, a review of the book on amazon that likened Tredinnick's writing to that of Sharpe.
I have always had a strange sort of love / hate relationship with Tom Sharpe's work. I've read all his books and not found them even mildly amusing. On the other hand, I've watched the television adaptations of his work time and time again and always been reduced to paroxysms of mirth. The incomparable Blott (on the Landscape) or Porterhouse Blue will live forever in my memory. Suffice to say the comparison of Miles Tredinnick's book with one of Sharpe's was enough to halt me in my tracks - if I didn't enjoy Sharpe, then I felt I was unlikely to enjoy Tredinnick.
I should have listened to my friend.
Fripp is a book that is certainly not for the narrow minded, being a tale of love - or should I say lust - amongst people who are old enough to know better. (It also contains the odd four-letter word.) Retired Rear Admiral Peter Legg has lost his wife, Margot. No, he is not a widower - he has merely driven her away with his constant demands for sex, morning, noon and night. In desperation, she flees to her friend Pauline's home on the Cornish Coast, not realising that Pauline is a lesbian who has her own rather different designs on Margot's body.
The Rear Admiral is himself desperate. Visits to Miss Forde, the Madam of a local escort agency, have depleted his life savings to nothing. In an effort to win back Margot, he persuades his GP, breakfast TV doctor Ryan Hopper, to illegally obtain a drug from America to suppress his sexual urges. In anticipation of it working, he recruits novice private detective Twyford Fripp to locate the missing Margot and persuade her to return.
The end result is a bawdy romp in which the hapless Fripp gets himself into all sorts of scrapes whilst trying to accomplish his mission. These include sparking off a terrorism alert surrounding a visit to a school in Cornwall by HRH Prince Charles and nearly getting himself shot for trespassing by a wealthy local farmer (who also has a more sinister occupation). He even almost gets himself murdered by Pauline who would do anything to have her wicked way with Margot and prevent her from returning to her husband.
The main characters in the book are all very strong and believable and are delightfully complimented by some of the minor characters. The bumbling local police force, the proprietor of the village shop, Mrs Tookey (she of the biggest bosoms known to mankind) and the teachers at the school where Pauline works as a secretary all add to the humour of the book. Special mention has to go to Herr Rumenberg, the school's German teacher whose command of the English language is not quite as good as he would like to believe.
Much of the humour arises from misunderstandings and double entendre. For the main, it is handled skilfully and with a light hand, although it is fair to say that the reader will probably wince occasionally. In reading the book, I must confess to finding one thing that irritated me. Tredinnick succumbed to one of my pet literary hates - the habit of slightly changing place names. The Cornish village in which the majority of the book is set was called Perranpoppen and its nearest town was Camelton. (As a resident of Cornwall, I kept reading Perranporth and Camelford.) I'm more than willing to concede that this complaint is probably nit-picking in the extreme, Anyone not living in Cornwall would undoubtedly not have given the place names a second thought, but, for me personally, they did detract from the overall readability of the book.
This is Tredinnick's first novel although he has previously written several successful plays and television comedies, including contributing to "Birds of a Feather" and writing for Frankie Howerd. Fans of Sharpe or similar writers would love it and, even those of us who are not fans would find it a rollicking good read. I await his second book with eager anticipation, laughing muscles at the ready.
Publisher: Comedy Hall Books
ISBN:0953760111
Price: £5.99
Date Reviewed: July 2002
My Rating: 4/5
