Harry has a compulsive gambling habit that makes Dostoevsky look like a once-a-year punter. The opening chapter is a small masterpiece of pacing, dialogue and tension which exactly captures the frenetic lunacy of the average city betting shop on any afternoon. Harry emerges from yet another heavy losing session to see Sean chasing a stark-naked over-stayer (Sweet Bill Cameron, Liberian national) down the street, “his dick flapping up and down like an oil-soaked bird trying to take off.”

The bleak south London setting is peopled by a variety of grotesque sociopaths, pathetic clowns and loveable tarts. (Even an airport car-park attendant, making only a brief appearance, can't smile for “the sheer weight of her lipstick restricting her mouth movement.”) The best-drawn of these is Eric ('Crazy Horse') McCleish, the hard-man of an Immigration Department already teeming with Sweeney-esque psychos. Sean is detailed to be his driver after ”the bugger burnt a hole in the breathalyser” and was banned for three years. Together they are set loose to do the job according to whatever rules they cook up over the previous night's Blue Label Smirnoff.

Harry's world is, if anything, even more dispiriting. ”The tools of procrastination he had at his disposal, the myriad ways of protracting delays from months into years, the lengthy appeals, the avenues for judicial review, the perpetual firing off of new representations, the invention of different compelling compassionate grounds for remaining in the UK, the last resort of a marriage to Essex estate trash...” It hardly makes for an uplifting view of 21st Century life.

The whole thing is saved from the kind of gloom G.F.Newman might have been proud of by some superb comic dialogue and brilliant running gags. In Chapter 13, for instance, our heroes confuse and intimidate Warren, a corrupt official at the Family Record Office, in a model of sparse, finely-timed comedy which had me laughing out loud, (something I haven't done for a long time.) Another great touch were the security guards at Chaucer House, Immigration HQ. Every time Sean leaves the building he overhears them arguing about fictitious matches between great fighters of the past; would Ali have beaten Joe Louis, could Tyson overcome Giant Haystacks ? As he leaves for the last time, he hears them ”discussing the number of rounds Sugar Ray Leonard would have needed to to knock out a polar bear.”

Both the main characters have emerged from 'normal' backgrounds. Sean grew up in Tonbridge, something Glaswegian Eric never lets him forget - ”There is a point, you know, at which people become so middle-class they evaporate into a blue rinse. Tonbridge. Christ!'” - and Harry has a conventional father and brother running an open-all-hours in Tooting. Saint's great skill is showing us that beneath this calm surface-life of suburban London is another, fiercer world, where no rules apply, and where ”the reality didn't matter half so much as appearance.” Both Sean and Harry realise only too keenly that their professional 'careers' are nothing more than an elaborate game, paid for with fear and ruined lives. They both want out, but are trapped by their addictions and, especially, by their unpaid debts to the past.

There is a superbly telling scene towards the end, when Harry meets Bohra, the local gangster who threatens to destroy him, at Wimbledon Dogs. Bohra knows nothing about gambling and has to be taught by Harry, who ”revelled in Bohra's naivety, his fear even. He was reluctant because he didn't want to appear foolish in an alien environment. Suddenly, Harry saw through him, saw the sham of culture and community was nothing more than a way of making the world smaller, scaling it down to match his mind. Christ, he didn't even have the savoire-faire to rise to a night at the greyhounds. Looking up at him, Harry wondered why he was afraid of this chump.”

All the best 19th Century novels ended in either a declaration of love (followed by marriage) a sudden inheritance or a voyage. ‘Blag’ has all three. In the end, for all its front-line dialogue and televisual scene-transitions, Saint has written an old-fashioned morality tale.

Laurence Inman was born 54 years ago in Birmingham. Did Philosophy at University. Should really have done English, since all of his waking hours (and many of his un-waking ones) he was obsessed with Literature, but you needed Latin O Level in those days, which he didn't have.. Taught English for 25 years (Manchester, London, Leicester, Exeter, Germany, Bahrain, Singapore) until an eye-complaint forced him to retire. Since then he has written plays, short stories, poetry (printed and performed) published cartoons, done loads of stand-up comedy and straight acting, appeared in the film ‘Sex Lives Of The Potato Men’ with Johnny Vegas and Mackenzie Crook. Currently writing a novel about a man who sees the murder of total strangers as the only way he can give up his ruinous habits.

© 2004 Laura Hird All rights reserved.