Pocket Notebook (Mike Thomas)

It is impossible to review this book without drawing attention to its debts. Starting with the cover we observe the replication of the face and eye from the 1970s Penguin paperback version of A Clockwork Orange (designed by David Pelham). The switching of bowler hat for a bobby's helmet in part remindng the reader of Dim and Billyboy becoming 'millicents' in the final section of Burgess's novel and delivering a beating to Alex.

The cover also uses the distinctive Gill Sans Ultra font, which echoes Kubrick's film version of Burgess's book (and its well-know promotional film poster). Inside the book,

loaning of the word 'droog' and mention of the 'Ludovico technique' further punctuate the author's desire to establish a Burgessian connection. I found the writing style, however, more akin to Irvine Welsh than Anthony Burgess. And the one book that wouldn't leave my mind the whole time that I was reading Thomas's work was Filth. The transgressive nature of the narrator's mind and also the point at which he (Jacob Smith) questions if there is something growing inside of him seem an obvious moment of intertextuality linking the book to the tapeworm that wriggles its way through Welsh's aforementioned novel.

The difference between Welsh and Thomas is that Welsh pushes it so much further, taking the reader to the limits of a twisted mind. Thomas in contrast bravely writes from the inside, brazenly borrowing a vocabulary and a grammar from Welsh (and to a lesser extent Will Self and Martin Amis) in order to do this. It takes guts to write from the inner mind of a prejudiced and bigoted police officer, when the author is himself a police officer. He does it though and whole-heartedly pulls it off.

The book is well written, well executed, and carries the reader from beginning to end with total absorption. Despite its debts, it shows an important level of self-awareness in relation to them. The protagonist's foot fetish, for example, is used to demonstrate the author's knowledge that he is writing a milder book than we would expect of Welsh but that he has pushed the boundaries considering his own employment. A biographical detail that I repeat since it cannot be ignored.

A review in The Independent cited the 'snooker game' as evidence of Mike Thomas writing from a policeman's perspective. For me this wasn't so, I felt when reading Pocket Notebook that Thomas had the unique ability to write from an outside perspective while being on the inside. I mean by this that he plays on all the media portrayals of what the police think of the public, and thereby creates the bad cop but somehow does not fall prey to the stereotype despite recreating it.

I read Thomas in the same way that I read the writer who appears to have so heavily influenced him (i.e. Welsh) - compulsively and for enjoyment. Often not knowing how to decode the work, and therefore deciding not too, but enjoying it all the same. Hence this type of writing becomes a rare treat for me, something that I can find no flaw in but at the same time lack a vocabulary with which to account for it. Leaving me with something that is wholly pleasurable.