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Review by Roger Miller
John Mortimer, now in his mid-70s, is one of those people who put us lesser mortals to shame. Trained as a lawyer (in British parlance, a barrister), he early on launched himself as a writer, and over the decades has produced novels, plays, works of autobiography, translations and television scripts. If you and I manage to crank out e-mail to a best friend once a week, we consider ourselves doing well.
Mortimer probably is best known in this country for the comic series on public television a few years back about Horace Rumpole, a wily and subversive aging barrister much put upon by his wife, Hilda, whom he refers to as She Who Must Be Obeyed, and by the rest of the legal profession, which he considers largely a gaggle of sycophants and unctuous careerists. At least two of his novels, "Paradise Postponed" and "Summer's Lease," have also been dramatized on public television.
The Rumpole series, based on several collections of Rumpole stories, illustrates a central characteristic of Mortimer: He is tremendously deceptive. More than most good writers, his novels tell something far different from what on the surface they seem to be about. Perhaps I should say even more than most good comic writers, because comedy -- whether written, oral or visual -- is practically always a mask for something distinctly uncomic, like pain or oppression.
So it is with Mortimer's latest novel, "Felix in the Underworld," the comic misadventures of a hapless minor novelist, Felix Morsom, once labeled, with more enthusiasm than exactness, the "Chekhov of Coldsands-on-Sea." Through a kind of accidental conspiracy mounted against him, one that gathers ever more complications as it rolls along, Felix becomes snared in the toils of the law.
The impetus that sets these mounting troubles in motion is a paternity claim laid against Felix. This is followed fairly quickly by a murder, and Felix is suspected. He goes on the run (from exactly what is unclear, though, in his own mind, neither fatherhood nor homicide) and ends up in the "underworld" among the homeless and outcasts of society.
This nicely developed and wittily described situation is book enough in itself. It encompasses several satires, including satire of publishing as celebrity-driven show business. Felix's latest novel is not doing well, competing as he must against the likes of Sandra Tantamount, who writes best-selling novels about "sex and shenanigans in world-class" contract bridge and snooker.
Felix's publicist, Brenda Bodkin, thinks that the tabloid scandal created by his troubles is just the thing to boost his celebrity (and his sales). It even turns her on a bit -- which is just fine with Felix, who lusts after her (he wouldn't mind seeing a bare Bodkin).
It also, like the Rumpole stories, satirizes the law, the point of the satire being that the law has nothing whatsoever to do with justice. A chief reason Felix gets into ever deeper legal trouble is that his lawyers blithely go along paying absolutely no attention either to him or to the facts of his case. They are quite smugly clueless.
But more than this, "Felix in the Underworld" makes an extended commentary on the decline of British society. A society gone off the rails, gone loony, gone American, perhaps: priests who are embarrassed by notions of religion, lawyers who are appalled by a concern for justice, publishers who are strangers to any literary values; teen gangs, drug pushers, wandering pedophiles.
This commentary is expressed in matters small (the decline of British radio): "Bloody wireless! Felix thought. Nothing on it, from morning till night, except people suffering from various complaints: 'Me and my erysipelas,' 'How I faced colostomy.' "
And matters large (the decline of British humaneness): Esmond, one of the gentlest of the street people Felix meets, is kicked to death by a group of drunken Bright Young Things on their way home from partying. To even the score, another homeless person, less gentle than Esmond, goes out and kicks to death a "party-goer" he encounters at random.
Not that Mortimer is some flaming reactionary decrying the death of civilization. The book's tone is one of liberal and mocking amusement: It's all too bad, it seems to say, but what can you expect?
It's not giving too much away to say that at the end Felix beats the murder rap, as all along you are sure he would -- and should. But the paternity rap? You are never completely sure he will -- or should. Nor is Felix.
Roger Miller is a freelance writer in Lopez, Pennsylvania. He can be reached at roger_miller@bookpage.com.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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