The Wimbledon Poisoner

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While Robert Rankin’s ‘Brentford Trilogy’– The Antipope, the first title, appeared in 1981 – relies on the underestimation of suburban life, The Wimbledon Poisoner offers a more complex perspective.

When the publisher Karim Jackson declines Henry’s monumental ‘The Complete History of Wimbledon’ on the grounds that it won’t appeal to international readers, Henry reflects that Wimbledon is ‘as much a mystery to them as the Orinoco was to Henry’. Very much in the vein of Tom Sharpe but lacking the rumbustious characters of novels such as Blott on the Landscape and Porterhouse Blue, this may have appealed to me when I was a student, but now, it is simply turgid and trying far too hard to be smart. When the publisher Karim Jackson declines Henry’s monumental 'The Complete History of Wimbledon' on the grounds that it won’t appeal to international readers, Henry reflects that Wimbledon is ‘as much a mystery to them as the Orinoco was to Henry’. Or he was coping with his daughter as she roamed the now deserted house, trying not to look as if he was glad to have the extra space. He considers the Wimbledon way of life to be just as real as that of any people deemed worthy of study by anthropologists.This refuge is compromised however by Jamie’s extra-marital affair, and by an obsession with a Puritan witchfinder which becomes so pronounced that Jamie comes to see himself as ‘The Beast of Putney’. One character, himself described as ‘a nice bloke’, champions those ‘who just want a mortgage and a little house and get on with it’.

I also found there to be a lot of unnecessary racial aggression in moments of this book which made it uncomfortable to read. East of Wimbledon (1993, ISBN 978-0-571-17151-4): Robert Williams passes himself off as a Muslim to get a job at the Wimbledon Independent Islamic Boys Day School.Henry Farr is a mild-mannered solicitor (lawyer) who lives a rather boring life in the London suburb of Wimbledon. Despite the cash injection, soon after, once again Dr Lamson’s habits were fed leading his family into finacial chaos.