Falling Down

Last week, in discussing a book I read recently, I mentioned that I've been on the hunt for fiction with a compelling, uncloseted gay protagonist. I got a couple of recommendations I plan on looking into. Meanwhile, though, another promising title had come up in my own searches: London Falling, by Paul Cornell.

I found this book on a list marked "LGBT," but it was the synopsis that drew me in. A team of London detectives is reaching the end of a longtime sting on a drug kingpin when things go horribly wrong. The suspect is apparently murdered in custody, impossibly and spontaneously. And then the small team of four begins to see visions of a supernatural parallel dimension intermingled with the city of London. Spookiness ensues.

It's the month of Halloween, this sounded like a fun romp. Sign me up! And then pull over right now and let me the hell off.

One problem with the book is probably unfair for me to hold against it. It's written by a British writer, set in a British place, and steeped in British terminology. Usually, I have little problem working past this when, say, I'm watching a British detective show or such. Here, the jargon was positively impenetrable. It was work to follow what was going on. But hey, that's probably on me; if I weren't a boorish American, maybe I'd better pick up on what the author was laying down. Maybe. I maintain that if Paul Cornell were a better writer, he'd have surmounted this issue.

But the evidence of him as a bad writer abounded. The pacing of the plot was off. One event at the end of Chapter Three persuaded me to keep going, but it was really the only plot point of note in the first quarter of the book. The story was built around four characters, and often a chapter would consist of the exact same material being rehashed repetitively from multiple perspectives (in tiny Dan Brown-like chunks).

There might have been merit in that approach had the characters felt different enough to have different perspectives. But the four were all virtually indistinguishable, given forgettable names and superficial quirks. The woman in the group finally got one chapter of intriguing back story around a third of the way into the book, but promptly went back to being her boring, cookie-cutter self soon after.

One of the quartet was gay, which is how the book had originally popped onto my radar. And though he was closeted at work, the book was not remotely about him coming out (one of two requirements I'd been trying to fill). But then, he was decidedly not the main character (failing the other requirement). In any event, he had no more personality or character than anyone else in the slog of a book.

I nearly bailed on it once, but found a raft of Goodreads.com reviews claiming that the book really got going around the 25% mark. I hung in until about 40%, and then simply could not take another word. "Who is this hack?" I wondered. How did he get a book published? Turns out he's a prolific television writer who has worked on everything from Doctor Who to Coronation Street. Seems to me he needs to stick to that medium. He needs actors to imbue his characters with any sense of realism or dimension. Otherwise, they do whatever the opposite is of leaping off the page.

I suppose you don't get a grade when you drop out, but London Falling deserves an F anyway.