FICTION: In for a Penny, In for a PoundBy Tim Waterstone Corvus Books 359pp, £16.99
IN THEORY it shouldn't be too hard to write a blockbuster novel. There's a formula, after all. Take several rich, powerful, glamorous people, add some big-business wheeling and dealing, throw in a few tawdry adulterous affairs and secret children and, voilà, you've got an outrageous and entertaining bestseller. Or, at least, you should. Unfortunately it isn't quite as easy as that, as Tim Waterstone's appalling new novel reminds us. In for a Penny, In for a Pound, the first novel in a decade from the founder of the Waterstone's bookselling chain, contains all these ingredients yet manages to be almost impressively tedious.
The story begins in 1997, when Hugh Emerson, a struggling publisher, is helped out of a financial jam by his friend Ned Macaulay. Ned is a member of a celebrated newspaper-owning dynasty who sometimes yearns to rescue the family firm from the inept hands of his stuffy father, Lord Kimpton, and dreamy brother Giles. Unbeknown to the family, their firm is being undermined by its evil financial advisers at an investment bank, one of whom is Hugh’s brother James.
Hugh’s family are all quite busy – his wife, Nicola, is running in the general election as a Labour candidate. And although she doesn’t win a seat, she does become close to Henry Jackson, a charismatic Labour grandee. As his wife’s affair with Jackson develops, Hugh tries to ignore the cracks in his marriage, and concentrates on his business, where he’s kept on his toes by his bestselling author Anna Lavey, who is hiding some shocking secrets. Meanwhile Ned tries to stop the wicked bankers from destroying his family’s company.
In for a Penny, In for a Poundis an astonishingly lazy book. To give an example of Waterstone's not-exactly-subtle real-world references, it features a big bookselling chain called Waterwell's. When the villainous bankers tell the Macaulays that a brash foreign media mogul wants to buy shares in their company, I immediately dismissed the idea that this foreign investor could be Australian. Surely that was far too obvious. But no. Rod Tadlock is indeed the Aussie owner of several newspapers who dreams of owning more news networks and film studios. I'm surprised he wasn't just called something like Poopert Burdock.
And that’s not the only cliche. Lavey has an obsessive fan, Miss Anstruther, who of course is a lonely, single, cat-loving lady of a certain age who may also be a repressed lesbian. The bankers themselves are all braying red-faced toffs. The newspaper editors are callous and sleazy. There are several Jewish characters, all of whom are crude stereotypes of varying degrees of offensiveness.
Perhaps this lazy characterisation wouldn’t be quite so annoying if the plot was exciting. But it isn’t. There’s no real structure: the story, such as it is, meanders along aimlessly, never building to a real climax. The Macauley group is in danger of being ruined by the evil bankers, but then, about two-thirds of the way through the book, it’s saved by Ned, and the plot moves on to Anstruther’s attempts to dig up Lavey’s sordid past.
A friend saw the cover of this book and asked: “Are you reading a Jeffrey Archer?” In reply I said something I never thought I’d say: “I wish I was reading a Jeffrey Archer book.” Which says it all.
Anna Carey is a freelance journalist
