… according to Catherine Forrest in The Guardian. This is definitely better than ‘enjoyably ludicrous.’
In more detail:
The Hellhound Sample, by Charles Shaar Murray (WordPress, £12.99)
Veteran music journalist Murray, author of biographies of John Lee Hooker and Jimi Hendrix, has tremendous fun with this over-the-top novel based on the enduring myth of Mississippi bluesman Robert Johnson. It shuttles back and forth at an alarming pace between 1938 (the year of Johnson’s mysterious death) and 2004, when the fictitious music legend James “Blue” Moon, who as a boy once heard Johnson play, is dying of cancer in his Californian mansion. Moon enlists fading English rock star Mick Hudson (a hilarious mix of Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart) to help record one final album with his estranged daughter, soul singer Venetia Moon, and her hip hop mogul son, Calvin. The result is a jumble of excessive incident, though Murray’s interpretation of Johnson’s alleged pact with the devil compels, and the whole is ludicrously enjoyable.
… which is all very cool, except that my lovely publisher, Headpress, has somehow become ‘WordPress’ … a classic Grauniadism, gotta love it, etc.
Recently attended The Literary Review’s Bad Sex Awards – first person I saw when I arrived was Ian Hislop, almost went up to say hey and then remembered that I didn’t actually know him; got reacquainted with John Walsh and Ruth Padell, missed Nicholas Blincoe (shame!); chortled at the absurdity of the cited extracts and got to know the charming and urbane AC Grayling, who reminded me of someone I couldn’t place until later, when I realised it was Kelsey Grammer as Hank McCoy in X-Men: The Last Stand, only … ummm … NOT BLUE – and now I’m itching for Hellhound to be a contender next time around.
Can’t wait to hear certain passages declaimed aloud by an AK-TOR with a heavy vocal thumb on the ‘sardonic’ button.
There’s a trail on my Hellhound!
