I had little idea that Rob grant also wrote books. Incompetence was incompetently placed under the non-fiction shelves along side other copies of the same book. I smiled when I saw this, and decided not to point it out to the staff worker in Smiths.

Set in the not-too-distant and very plausible future, a sort of United States of Europe has formed and beauraucracy is now the leader of the people, and the people still follow the State like the gaumless sheep that they are. Harry Tequila is having a damn hard time trying to solve a crime that starts off with his best friend being killed in an elevator accident which propels into the sky and lands without mercy, killing his friend and the other poor unlucky souls that had the misfortune to enter.

Tequila is a sort of underground agent, doing odd jobs in the form of assasinations, recon, espionage and the usual everyday things you tend to do in your spare time. He has money, but he doesn’t flaunt, living in a dingy flat where heroin users shoot up at the foot of the stairs. Finding a message in the papers as usual, encoded, he heads off to Italy to meet his friend only to be met by his carcass.

In the mix is the captain of the Police force named Zuccho; a man who is probably immune to sedatives thanks to the ammount of testerone and rage that pours from him. He doesn’t liek Tequila, but Tequila has so many identities and forged documentation that he decides to pull out one where he’s in charge, but decides it might be safer to give Zuccho the lead on the case.

The train journey Tequila chases to grab, and the train conductor with whom he argues with a great determination to hurt was also a gem moment in the book

The results are not good and Tequila discovers that the so called accident was in fact murder. Tequila starts to become involved in a strange conspiracy, is framed and on the run from the police. All the time he is running out of identities and needs to find the person that killed his friend, and now seems to be going on a serial killing campaign – to add to his woes, the deaths seemed to be a message for Tequila from the serial killer who seems to be able to read all his movements, and with time running out fast he needs to find the source as quickly as possible. With no back up but his own instincts, Tequila is on his own.

What you will pick up on Incompetence is the amount of Red Dwarf style humour – there’s buckets of it, and as a fan of red Dwarf you could quite easily picture some of the characters from Red Dwarf: Lister, Kryten et al. It’s very very funny at times, it’s juvenile, almost student material at times, but it’s funny stuff – I guess if you’re a female you will probably find it less amusing, will probably tut a lot and call it degenerate material. Godd for those boring folk, eh?

Incompetence is a perfect satire of what we might except from a European state – much of it is already being implemented, and with Mr Blair with his thumb firmly up his own backside we can almost expect a unified state where Big Brother watches over all that we do and requires a valid account of all the details. The politicians continue to twiddle their thumbs and lift out their hand behind their packs, only long enough to hold a fair weight of paper currency, and to jump on any event that will add to their presence in the media for a longer term. All the while Tequila is being hunted down and toyed with by a serial killer who doesn’t kill Tequila, but those around him.

There are some very memorable characters in the book, including Lupo. Lupo seems to have issues, or in this case a medical condition, that enforces him to have an erection whether he wants one or not, for good. This of course plays havoc when serving food on a moving train, which results in some rather odd but amusing moments.

The train journey Tequila chases to grab, and the train conductor with whom he argues with a great determination to hurt was also a gem moment in the book. It demonstrates Grant’s ability to add darkness with a subtle edge wrapped in humour. It’s so well dialogued that you would probably wish to express the same thoughts to most ticket offices you visit.

Set in the not-too-distant and very plausible future, a sort of United States of Europe has formed and beauraucracy is now the leader of the people

Of course these are only a few key, and brilliant, moments in Incompetence. What the book definitely lacks is a satisfying conclusion. At times Grant’s writing seems to take a Grisham-like life, where comedy transitions to hard hitting crime thriller. This does feel like a lack of direction during some scenes in the book, and therefore doesn’t flow as well as it could. The ending really is quite horrible and is the only real let down of an otherwise humorous and entertaining comic thriller.

With Incompetence Grant proves that he’s no one trick pony and that the jokes, as juvenile as some may seem, are fully loaded and ready to fire. There’s a definite Douglas Adams feel to the book, but there’s every chance this is both coincidence and flattery. It does no harm to the book in finding it’s own place to stand.

Verdict: Enjoyable and satisfying comedy thriller with an equally unsatsifying end. A book of three-quarters (or .75 for your Eurocrats)