Review - Boxer Beetle, Ned Beauman

Title: Boxer Beetle

Author: Ned Beauman

Publisher: Sceptre

ISBN: 9780340998410

Rating: 5 baseball bats

Favorite thing: The hilarious awkwardness of Erskine

Least favorite thing: Sinner Roach

On the zombie how-to shelf?: No, but it'll be on some other shelf somewhere.

When I'm browsing in a bookstore, I give a book approximately one paragraph to capture my interest before I move on. This book passed that test with flying colors.

In idle moments I sometimes like to close my eyes and imagine Joseph Goebbels' forty-third birthday party. I like to think that even in the busy autumn of 1940, Hitler might have found time to oragnise a surprise party for his close friend - pretending for weeks that the date had slipped his mind, deliberately ignoring the Propaganda Minister's increasingly sulky and awkward hints, and waiting until the very last order had been dispatched to his U-boat commanders on the evening of Tuesday, 29 October before he led Goebbels on some pretext into the cocktail lounge of the Reich Chancellery. A great should of "Alles Gute zum Geburtstag!', a cascade of streamers, some relieved and perhaps even slightly tearful laughter for Goebbels himself as he embraced the Führer, and the party could begin.

Part scientific exploration (ish), part love story (ish), and part treasure hunt, the real meat of this story was in its utterly deplorable yet strangely lovable characters. "Fishy," who is imagining the birthday party mentioned above, is a modern-day lock-in, stricken with a condition that makes him smell like week-old fish; Seth "Sinner" Roach, a vertically challenged, strangely handsome, alcoholic, Jewish boxer; Philip Erskine, an utterly ridiculous entomologist, fascist, and Hitler admirer.

I'm guessing Sinner was supposed to be the star of this book, but for me it was Erskine. Sinner was angry, mean, vindictive, self-destructive, and utterly unrepentant. Erskine was a fascist and eugenicist and you don't want to like him, but he's so bumbling, so awkward and uncomfortable in his own skin that you can't help, at the very least, be amused by him. As it was, I grew to have the same affection you might have for a slightly retarded dog that continually ran into walls; that is, pitying. And despite the gravity that becomes very immediate in his relationship with Sinner near the end of the book, I could never quite take him seriously.

Several times, this book made me laugh out loud. The style of writing is simultaneously flip and evocative which makes for a very engrossing, very fast read. Watching Sinner's and Erskine's relationship--I almost want to put quotes around the word--develop is like watching a train wreck. Following Fishy's present day treasure hunt (did I mention the Welsh hitman?) lent an extra sense of mystery to what was happening back in '34.

This is definitely a book I'd recommend to friends... as long as they have a well-developed sense of humor.