Why you shouldn't read Only an Alligator

Picked up in my local charitable retailer on the grounds that it had a picture of an alligator on the cover, this book is shaping up to be far less than the sum of its parts. I am starting to regret the whim that made me think "what the hell, it's only 50p". I could have got a Mars (sorry, Believe) Bar for that. I own one other Aylett book, the never-read Bigot Hall, which I bought because, again a) it had a good cover and b) I thought it might be a reference to, and therefore a bit like, the work of Thomas Love Peacock, author of early 19th-century satires such as Nightmare Abbey, Headlong Hall, Crotchet Castle etc.

Now, I bow to no-one in my love for trashy sci-fi nonsense, but I do like a bit of plot and some vaguely convincing characters in amongst all the wacky inventiveness and cutesy maps. What Only an Alligator is reminding me of at the moment is some hideous arranged marriage between China Mieville and Terry Pratchett, with none of either author's good qualities. It reads like the dregs of Philip Jose Farmer with a tinge of Harry Harrison's later Bill the Galactic Hero books, where his increasingly ill-advised writing collaborations moved further and further away from the satirical excellence of the first novel towards tedious and lurid tenth-rate schlock. Yes, I know that was the point, but even tenth-rate schlock has standards, you know.

I didn't know much about Mr. Aylett so I looked up his website. He's written quite a few books (OaA is the first in a series of four novels in the Accomplice series, God help us) and has, apparently, been described by the Guardian as "distressingly brilliant" - but more interestingly, he's got a whole page of pictures of himself on there. I'm not talking about one or two. There are about twenty of them - most in the same pose and wearing the same Lennon specs/shades. I never quite understand why people who are not actors or performers (who kind of need to show what they look like) do this sort of thing, especially when they are, frankly, not all that attractive. I mean, who is this portfolio of increasingly uninspiring images aimed at? Would even the hardest-core Aylett fan really plaster their bedroom with two dozen very similar pics of their favourite author attempting to look cool? And if so, why?

Anyway, I will attempt to struggle through the rest of this mercifully slender book and report back here when I've finished, for everyone's sake. I fear the news will not be good.