Word: felix
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...Felix, who leads a tame existence churning out book after book about "frustrated middle-class lives," is unprepared to suddenly receive some vaguely threatening communications from Gavin, a shadowy character who introduces him to Miriam. Mirry avers that Felix fathered her son Ian a decade ago, and Felix, hard-pressed to disprove her case, is summarily presented with a bill for 20,000 pounds for Ian's keep from the Parental Rights and Obligations Department...
...menacing, seemingly omnipotent PROD would fit well in a book called 1997, but Felix's perplexing predicament owes as much to Kafka as to Orwell. Frustrated by the impenetrable conspiracy enmeshing him, Felix frantically threatens Gavin, his only link to the mysterious world of Mirry and PROD. Unfortunately, when a dead and mangled body surfaces in Gavin's car, Felix's wild threats make him the prime suspect in the murder investigation...
Here again Mortimer borrows a page from the Orwell oeuvre. Down and Out in Paris and London chronicles Orwell's marginal survival for a time among the London poor; Felix, too, temporarily joins the ranks of London's lower classes to escape from the police and to search for Gavin, who Felix spots alive after his purported murder. Certainly Felix's short sojourn on the London streets is well-written and memorable, but it scarcely seems central enough to the book's plot to justify the title. The time Felix spends on the streets between the murder and his subsequent...
Mortimer describes better Felix's normal habitat when he is not being tried for murder, the circle of literary lions who lunch and speak and tour to promote their books. The formalities of the book-touring circuit seem deliciously droll when dripping from Mortimer's pen, and the occasional appearances of Sandra Tantamount, Felix's chief rival within his publishing house, furnish a comic garnish to a sometimes somber book. Felix's hapless adventures on tour and his constant, futile pursuit of his publicist illuminate Felix's personality even as they entertain...
...Much of Felix's charm comes from its wonderfully self-conscious adherence to the classic conventions of mystery novels. A few key red herrings are made painfully obvious, as are several crucial clues. A large, distinctive signet ring is referred to in detail three or four times; only a very slow-witted reader could fail to mark its significance. In the car after interviewing Mirry about Gavin's death, one policeman turns to his partner and asks significantly, in time-honored detective novel tradition, "I wonder how she knew [the murder weapon] was a spanner," since the precise murder weapon...