Sat 18 Jun 2011
Reviewed by Barry Gardner: T. G. GILPIN – Death of a Fantasy Life.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Crime Fiction IV , Reviews[3] Comments
T. G. GILPIN – Death of a Fantasy Life. St. Martin’s, US, hardcover, 1993. First published in the UK: Quartet, hardcover, 1988.
I reviewed what I thought was Gilpin’s first novel, Is Anybody There?, for Mystery News, and thought it was a very good and off-beat story. But it turns out that this was his first, published in England in 1988 and only now appearing here.
Speaking of unlikely teams, how about a professor of theoretical linguistics and a Soho stripper? The professor comes to town seeking an erratic and unlovable nephew of whom he is the guardian, and while having a pint in a pub meets a stripper when she mistakes him for someone else.
One of her friends has been murdered a short time before, and it turns out that the erratic nephew knew her; as is true of the next stripper who is murdered, very quickly.
The prof and the stripper get their heads together, he out of concern for the nephew, she for the sorority of strippers, but they come to no conclusions, and the alliance dies aborning when the somewhat sexless prof rebuffs her friendly (no more, surely) advances.
He is unable to settle back into his routine, however, and when certain events occur he is drawn back in to the world well lost.
This is one of those books of a peculiarly British type; not farcical, but with a cast of characters just slightly askew. It’s not humorous in a thigh-slapping sense, but somehow the overall tone is one of gentle humor.
Gilpin is a literate and enjoyable stylist who seems to like the people about whom he writes, and I think you will, too. This doesn’t have the depth of Is Anyone There?, but it’s defintely worth reading. I particularly liked the ending.
Bibliography: Adapted from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin —
GILPIN, T(imothy) G., 1946- .
Death of a Fantasy Life (n.) Quartet 1988; St. Martin’s, 1993.
Is Anybody There? (n.) Constable 1991; St. Martin’s, 1992.
Missing Daisy (n.) Constable 1995; St. Martin’s, 1995
June 18th, 2011 at 9:08 pm
Another author I’d never heard of. My only excuse is that he wrote only the three novels, and none appeared in paperback in the US.
I will probably give this one a go — the premise is certainly intriguing enough — then use that as a gauge to determine whether or not further effort would be advisable.
[…]
A few minutes later. I will skip the last of the three, a novel in which an online bookseller says a six-year-old girl is raped.
The description of Gilpin’s first book reads thusly:
“Retired police officer Tom Wiggins poses as a man eager to communicate with his loved one and attends Mrs. Hathaway’s Thursday night seance in order to investigate the mysterious death of Mrs. Veronica Eckersley. ”
A possibility.
June 24th, 2011 at 9:18 am
Any book that has a seance always attracts my interest.
June 24th, 2011 at 9:35 am
It was the stripper in book two that caught mine.