In comedian Andy Hamilton’s first novel, Kevin Carver plays Lenny in a fictional soap opera. His character is a bad’un – Dirty Len, if you like – and Kevin is irritated by fans of the show who confuse him with his role. The tabloids don’t help, and when Kevin’s real-life relationship with his onscreen girlfriend goes sour, the knives are out. Hamilton steers his narrative along a narrow and treacherous path: the unlikeable protagonist who must redeem himself. While Kevin is tried in court for his misdemeanours, the reader is the true judge and jury whose sympathy Hamilton begs for, as Kevin makes one bad decision after another. But it’s not so much the laws he has broken as his self-absorption and self-pity that risk losing the reader. Ploughing the depths, Kevin faces a long, slow road to redemption. Hamilton pays out the rope of salvation with great skill and, although there is plenty of comedy, particularly in some of the secondary characters, he ultimately chooses not to play this heartfelt drama for laughs.
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