2025 Reading Challenge 31 The Satsuma Complex
A man goes for a drink with an acquaintance in a pub and also meets the woman of his dreams and wishes, but she disappears. He is determined to find her. Thus follows mystery, corruption, death and squirrels.
If you have seen Bob Mortimer on telly, then you know what to expect; it’s like an extended episode of Would I Lie to You? But amongst the funniest things in the book is the fact that Americans can’t cope with something being called Satsuma. In typical Bob style, the main narrator, Gary, seamlessly blends the mundane and the surreal into a readable murder mystery and romantic comedy.
There are some lovely, well-drawn characters, as you would expect, no Gary Cheeseman, the sniper’s dream, on account of his large head, but there is Grace, his spiky elderly next door neighbour with a dodgy hip, a pie fetish and her dog Lassoo. There are more menacing and unpleasant characters than you’d usually get in a Bob anecdote, so it is pleasing to see him stretch himself into real drama.
The book itself is about misfits finding their place in the world and making some kind of impact on the tides that buffet them hither and thither. It can be cruel, funny and heartwarming. It is a gentle read, but it is also an easy read, just as it is enjoyable listening to Bob ramble on. At times, it rambles a bit too much during the middle section, a little self-indulgent on the whimsy, but it picks itself up and delivers some action and excitement and some emotional heft in the final scenes.
I consumed this over a weekend. I’ll track down the next one for a holiday read. All in all, thoroughly enjoyable, and who can’t love a book that has the following lines:
Grace: Cordoning gives me the shivers!
Gary: What? Because it reminds you of James Corden.
I gave the book 7.0 out of 10.
TTRPG Thoughts:
You can always rely on Bob to create some well-observed characters and mannerisms that are a joy to replicate when you are setting up NPCs. Especially here in some of the more unlikeable villains like Tommy. It is also, through the audiobook that Bob and Sally Phillips narrate, that it is interesting to see what tiny voice inflexions Bob adds to his characters to differentiate them - something that any GM can attempt, just keeping the voice low, or speeding up the conversation, or speaking deliberately and precisely. You don’t need to be a master of accents to give a little flavour to an NPC.
As a reasonably well-plotted Noir mystery, it shows some good techniques of keeping the mystery elements going whilst various clues gradually surface as Gary stumbles upon them. Grace and the local wildlife provide an excellent foil for Gary to bounce his theories off of whilst he slowly figures out what is going on. But as Gary says, he’s a “shithouse”1, so it constantly remains to be seen if he’ll take any heroic actions, read the book to find out if this changes!
1A shithouse as an insult is someone who is a coward/wuss/lacking in courage/has no bottle.