Gotcha? Gotcha!
T
The Gun Seller
by Hugh Laurie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
There is no justice in the world. What is it about certain British actors that means they not only act, but sing, dance, play various musical instruments and are effing good writers?
Seriously? This book, by Dr House himself, is hysterically funny with rapid-fire dialogue and a fair amount of action. I have recommended it to several like-minded people and they’ve all loved it, too.
Give it a shot.
And I guess it’s okay that there is no justice in the world, if it means I get to read books like this.
For your reading tantalization, here is the first page of The Gun Seller:
Imagine that you have to break someone’s arm.
Right or left, doesn’t matter. The point is that you have to break it, because if you don’t…well, that doesn’t matter either. Let’s just say bad things will happen if you don’t.
Now, my question goes like this: do you break the arm quickly – snap, whoops sorry, here let me help you with that improvised splint – or do you drag the whole business out for a good eight minutes, every now and then increasing the pressure n the tiniest of increments, until the pain becomes pink and green and hot and cold and altogether howlingly unbearable?
Well exactly. Of course. The right thing to do, the only thing to do, is to get it over with as quickly as possible. Break the arm, ply the brandy, be a good citizen. There can be no other answer.
Unless.
Unless unless unless.
What if you were to hate the person on the other end of arm? I mean, really really hate them.
This was a thing I now had to consider.
I say now, meaning then, meaning the moment I am describing; the moment fractionally, oh so bloody fractionally, before my wrist reached the back of my neck and my left humerus broke into at least two, very possibly more, floppily joined-together pieces.
The arm we’ve been discussing, you see, is mine. It’s not an abstract, philosopher’s arm. The bone, the skin, the hairs the small white scar on the point of the elbow, won from the corner of a storage heater at Gateshill Primary School – they all belong to me. And now is the moment when I must consider the possibility that the man standing behind me, gripping my wrist and driving it up my spine with an almost sexual degree of care, hates me. I mean, really, really hates me.
He is taking for ever.
THE GUN SELLER
Hugh Laurie
Gotcha? Gotcha!
