Gary Thorn is in the middle of investigating a serious criminal case in south London involving police corruption, domestic violence, possibly even murder, when he stops in the street to speak to a passing squirrel. He tells the squirrel what he’s planning to do next and the creature, as ventriloquised by Gary, tries to talk him out of it. “I would think around that decision a bit deeper than you obviously have,” it says.
This is how the comedian Bob Mortimer writes a crime novel: with squirrel interludes, recurring duck gags and a private eye with a fondness for novelty socks. The latter is an acquaintance of Gary’s who runs out on him one night in the pub, leaving behind a USB stick in the shape of a corncob and is later reported dead under suspicious circumstances. On the same night, Gary is also abandoned by a mysterious young woman with a button nose and severe fringe with whom he tries to flirt over steak and chips.
Gary is not a real detective. He a shy legal assistant at a Peckham solicitor’s office who panics at the first sign of danger and only persists with the case because he fancies the mysterious befringed woman who turns out to be embroiled in it.
Mortimer, himself a shy Peckham solicitor before he became a comedian, proves quite deft at writing crime fiction: the plot has a familiar noirish shape, complete with potential femme fatale, but there are enough surprises and reversals to keep it rattling along.
But it’s the details that really set this book apart. Off the wall doesn’t quite cover it. What other fictional sleuth would write “large bananas” in tiny letters on an architrave in his office to cheer himself up at work? Or assign the names Zak Briefcase and Lengthy Parsnips to a pair of dogs he passes in the street? Fans of Mortimer’s surrealist turns on Would I Lie to You?, or his internet sketch show Train Guy, won’t be disappointed. Nor will crime fiction devotees, if only they can get over the talking squirrels.
• The Satsuma Complex by Bob Mortimer is published by Gallery Books (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may
