028. City of Tiny Lights (2005).

City of Tiny Lights by Patrick Neate (2005).

         

 London’s best and only Ugandan-Indian private eye,

Tommy Akhtar’s first book.

He is a handsome, tough, smart and hard-drinking war-veteran

Who believes in karma. 

And

even after all these years of troubles and near death experiences,

still don’t know how to  draw the line.

P

layers. – Tommy Akhtar.   The private eye.

Ex-soldier. When he was young, he for no apparent reason just joined the army and went to Afghan civil war shooting down Russians with CIA which earned him certain amount of respect in his neighbor.

After the war, he had suffered with war-related trauma for couple of years staying at home and doing nothing. 

Now, he is making decent living by doing all the stuffs that private eye is supposed to be doing, up until a prostitute named Melody walks into his tiny office.

As a narrator of this book, Tommy gives his opinion of everything (from prostitutes, Mid East politic to immigration and terrorists) from immigrant’s point of view. His voice, which is accurate, sharp, cynical yet funny as hell, gives us a lot of insight 

knowledge of what is London street made of and how the world is working.

If only you can get past his heavy London slang…

Farzad.   Tommy’s father. One of these old, drunken, grumpy wise man.

He used to be a lot of things but now, he settle down to become a relatively famous painter who keeps painting nothing but his late-wife with different styles and colors.

A very toght man who made lots of enemies when he was young, but now he just drinks and paints all day.

Others. There are a few interesting characters here. Tommy’s brother, Gundappa, who owns small Taxi company, is an total ass. Couple of his employees, Swiss Chris and Big John, are both crazy and hilarious. Swiss Chris has a dig the size of big banana and enormously proud of it, of course. And Big John literally shits like an elephant and constantly plugging his washroom, driving his wife crazy!!

Then there is Melody, 22 yrs hooker with huge boob job, Av who is his neighbour’s son and wannabe gangster, Carl Donnelly who is his cop friend. 

Also notable is an inspiring terrorist Al-Dubayan who after years of doing nothing essential but talking funny, finally decides to live up to his reputation as a world’s most notorious terrorist.

P

lace. –London, England, the city of tiny lights, where cops, gangs, prostitutes, politicians and terrorists all co-exist in the same pot called multiculturalism. 

The city street portrayed here is gritty, grimy and totally unfair to regular citizens.

But good for the readers because it is filled with wild peoples with all sort of different background which of course makes a great reading meterial.

P

lot. – You can read this book as a regular mystery but there is more than that in here. It is kind of book where the story is just there to supply the platform to write something other than the actual plot line.

As a sharp Ugandan-Indian detective, Tommy has a lot in his mind and never hesitates to express his feeling for everything surrounds him: from big things like culture, history, war, politics, immigration to tiny stuffs like the best way to get rid of hangover or how to spot pimp and things like that. He also have things for the street girls and passionately talks about the origin of popular prostitute names and where they come from. This book is half essay, one quarter history lesson and mystery the rest.

OK. Here is the basic storyline.

1.      A prostitute, Melody, is looking for her roommate, also a prostitute name Natasha, who is missing after the last gig.

2.      A former MP who paid for her roommate’s service got brutally murdered with a broody HAMMER!!

3.      From there, slowly but surely, it reaches outrageous but quite realistic climax.

4.      And then, as if that is not shocking enough, there is one more matter to tie up before the final “peaceful” ending. The ending is absolutely fantastic!!

                    

V

erdict. –This book is more about social study than mystery it claims to be. Over half of the book is filled with information that has nothing to do with the story but THAT is the reason why this book notched Critics Award in 2004, I think. 

The information contained here is quite unique. If you like to know about immigrants’ life story in London or how to manage successful terrorist units in Britain, just pick up this book. Of course, this book is much more than that: it actually finishes with crazy ending at the end which is shocking and hilarious at the same time. Exactly my kind of book.

The only problem I had was that British has tendency to give away literary award to the writers who use lots of street language. Which is OK except that for non British guy like me, it takes while to get use to the language they are speaking. It takes me about 30 pages to get the feel for Tommy’s dialogue and after that, it was smooth ride.

 

This book is not for everyone but if you are tired of just plain good old mystery and looking for little more feed for your intelligent side, this book will help you understand little better on what is going on in the world inside out. 

And don’t forget. It has nice ending and the spectacular climax!! before that.

Overall, very good book to spend a few days.