Book Review: A writer's opinion

 

Wilkie Martin:

The Inspector Hobbes ‘Unhuman’ Series

 I first came across Wilkie Martin’s ‘cosy detective’ books a few years back when the first in the series was recommended to me by Goodreads, based on my previous reading. I have to say that, though I enjoyed these books, they clearly didn’t make all that big an impact on me as, when the most recent one came out, I couldn’t remember whether or not I’d read the one immediately before it. I went back to that one on my Kindle and read the first chapter but I was still unsure so I went back to the one before and read the first chapter of that. That rang a very faint bell, so I decided to start from there. Eventually I realised I had read books three and four before but I’d simply forgotten virtually everything about them! This doesn’t really suggest they are particularly inspiring, does it? However, I enjoyed reading them a second time and it allowed me to read the new episode confident that I was up to date with the ongoing adventures of the hapless Andy Caplet.

 

    

   

 

Set in the sleepy Cotswold town of Sorenchester, the stories are narrated by young Andy, who is a reporter on the local newspaper when the first book opens. Andy is incompetent, accident-prone and generally something of a loser, but his life improves considerably after he meets Inspector Hobbes. Hobbes is, we eventually learn, an ‘unhuman’, along with one or two other inhabitants of Sorenchester, though what precisely this means is unclear. He has certain unusual abilities, such as extraordinary physical strength and agility, and certain unusual habits, such as his fondness for chomping up animal bones when he is stressed. He also appears to be extremely long-lived and has been a police officer in the town for several generations. Hobbes is a wonderful character – he is quiet, calm, extremely good at his job, insightful, kindly and irreproachably decent, honourable and brave.  And he seems to see the potential for these qualities in Andy, which is why he takes him under his wing.

           After becoming homeless, Andy moves in with Hobbes and his elderly but extraordinary housekeeper, an expert in both martial and marital arts, and a woman whose incredible cookery skills engender in Andy a keen interest in food which results in him eventually becoming the food critic for the local newspaper. Hobbes and the housekeeper become surrogate parents for Andy, whose own parents are awful, and Andy becomes much more successful and develops many of the traits of his peculiar mentor as the books progress. He even meets and marries the woman of his dreams.

           The novels are sweet and gently funny. Andy resembles the warm-hearted catastrophe-magnet characters played in old films and TV series by comics like Norman Wisdom, Abbott and Costello, Charlie Drake, Michael Crawford and Jerry Lewis, but the novels are set in the (roughly) modern world. The humour generally works and I have been known to chuckle out loud while reading them, though it usually raises a smile rather than a belly laugh and sometimes you just want to give Andy a good slapping, quite frankly. Nevertheless, he is an endearing character, though I think it is surprising that Hobbes and Andy’s wife are so patient and forgiving with him. As the tales are told by Andy himself, the reader is put in the position of seeing events through his naïve and rather stupid eyes. Such an obviously unreliable narrator stretches the reader’s suspension of disbelief at times, but the novels are so quietly charming that I found myself just going along with the silliness and generally enjoying it.

           These aren’t high-brow novels and they won’t appeal to readers who like fast, hard-hitting action or hard-boiled detectives. They are gentle, enjoyable stories about characters who are mostly pleasant and decent, and who fight against injustice and intolerance in a comforting way. It is a bit like Midsummer Murders but with added supernatural seasoning.

 

RATING: Inspector Hobbes series ***

 

 

Interesting fact: Wilkie Martin is having some success with these charming, if undemanding, tales, and has written a recipe book spin-off of dishes that Inspector Hobbes would enjoy.