Reading an average book is not the end of the world

It’s tough to read a book in which all of the protagonists are atheists and all of the antagonists are theists and still not particularly enjoy it. It’s tough, because I really want to rave about such a book. The book is Not the End of the World by Christopher Brookmyre, written in 1998, and the current reading selection for The Nonbelieving Literati (or NL, as some of us call it).

The problems that I had with the book will probably be considered petty by most. And, clearly, they are not the usual standards by which one should judge a book’s merits.

The first has to do with location. Nearly the entire book took place in sunny Southern California and, most specifically, in Santa Monica (with some scenes covering West Hollywood and Downtown L.A.). I generally love detective novels and, even more, those that take place in Los Angeles. For those who don’t know, I’m a lifelong California guy and was born in Santa Monica Hospital (now UCLA Santa Monica Hospital).

The problem here was that the book is written by Brookmyre the Brit, and his knowledge of the area is severely limited. I was continually distracted by streets that don’t exist, streets that intersect with others at points they shouldn’t and inaccurate building and scenery descriptions. The main policeman (and police force) was LAPD, even though they have no jurisdiction in the city of Santa Monica which has its own police force. The only time you will ever see LAPD there is when they are appearing in Santa Monica Superior Court on a case.

The second goes back to Brookmyre the Brit. I have nothing against British authors. There this guy named Darwin who wrote one of my favorite books of all time. In fiction, I have a high regard for guys like Robert Louis Stevenson and Charles Dickens. But when you have a book set in Southern California I am, again, distracted by continuous use of British slang. Only one of the characters was supposedly from the United Kingdom, yet all characters were speaking and thinking in a British “accent”.

Finally (and more pertinent to whether it is a good book or not) I found the plot to be way over-the-top. While it’s fun having all of the evil folks in the book being Christians, this is not my experience. Generally I find them decent, simple folks who are a bit dense when it comes to issues of the supernatural. While I find the net result of religion to often be “evil”, it’s seldom the individual proponents of it who are. And, for those who are, this still was an implausible storyline.

The reader is presented with a fundamentalist pastor of a mega-church based loosely on Pat Robertson who goes off the deep end and contrives his own mini-apocalypse by purchasing nuclear weapons to detonate off the coast of California in the hopes of inducing a tidal wave of biblical proportions that will wash away the evils of the Hollywood culture, while simultaneously convincing America that this was an act of the vengeful god of the Old Testament and which said pastor has prophesied. Apparently, doing so will renew and revitalize our country’s love and respect for this “likeable” mythological character. I suppose that Brookemyre can see that this would be a bit of a stretch, even for a billionaire pastor, so he gives him the help of a far right wing militia group which helps him purchase the nuclear weapons and has assassinated 5 scientists who could have led the FBI on a hot trail back to Pastor Evil.

In the end he is foiled due to the fact that Brookemyre failed to hook him up with sidekicks Fat Pastor and Reverend Mini-Me. Well, sure, I can suspend disbelief for that one.

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