Review
By Geoff Nelder
Paperback: 228 pages
Publisher: Brambling Books (1 Jul 2005)
ISBN-10: 095495632X
ISBN-13: 978-0954956325
Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 12.6 x 1.8 cm
Geoff Nelder escaped from his roots in the south of England and now lives in the north. He would do most things for a laugh but had to pay the mortgage so he taught I.T. and Geography in the local High school. After thirty years in the learning and wild-animal control business he nearly become good at it. A post-war baby boomer, he has post-grad researched and written about climatic change, ran computer clubs and was editor of a Computer User Group magazine for 11 years. He read voraciously after his mother enrolled him into the children's science fiction book club when he was four, and has written for fun since his fingers moved independently. His experiences on geographical expeditions have found themselves into amusing pieces in the Times Educational Supplement and taking his family on house-swap holidays years before they became popular added both authenticity and wild imagination to his creativity.
Escaping Velocity
Review by Bruce Durie
If you like your prison escape stories written with ironic humour, your international jewel theft books full of quirky musicians and your librarians sexy, this is the book for you. If you're never considered any of those apparently jarring concepts, now's your chance. Ostensibly a straightforward "I've been framed and I'll prove it" novel, Escaping Reality itself escapes reality and turns into a tour-de-force of plot-twisting, fell-walking, identity-hiding computer-hacking riotous turmoil. As a stiff-necked literary critic might say, it underlines the existential meretriciousness of solipsism. The rest of us might say that it reaffirms the fact that we are all, ultimately, on our own. But don't let that get you down - the protagonist (he's no hero!) triumphs, gets his own back to some extent and even manages to have a surprising amount of naughty stuff on the way.
The book reads as if it has two parts - the opening mystery/who-dun-it set-up during which you think "That's couldn't have happened" and "That's just unlikely" and the second half - more a thriller - in which you see that "Ah! THAT'S how it happened" and "Of course, that makes sense", all laced with quips, humour and an acceptance that bicycles sometimes have minds of their own. The action takes in prison life, what it's like to be a jobbing musician, good cops, bad cops and setting in Cumbria and non-tourist Amsterdam. Any more detail would give it away, and the plot deserves to be discovered as you read (and re-read, because you just won't get all the darker and complex undertones first time around).
Comparisons are invidious - and there's no other book to compare it to, anyway - but imagine an Alistair Maclean novel written by Robert Rankin after looking at too many Salvador Dali paintings on a rollercoaster. Or something like that. Better still, buy it and read it - you won't be disappointed. But you might wish all librarians were a bit more like Wendy.
Bruce Durie is the Director of the Edinburgh Science Festival, a science journalist, senior academic, and author of many fiction and non-fiction books.
E-mail: bd@brucedurie.com
Website: http://www.brucedurie.com/
