No More Laughter

It's official. Because of the economic downturn publishers have decided that the public are too fragile too read anything original and different. How kind of them. Apparently in the present slough of despond all we can read is safe books. Books that we are comfortable with. Same old same old. So our fare for the next ten months will be Celebrity forensic misery detecive stories. What a load of the proverbial. Now, surely given these traumatic times we want something different to read to lift us out of the slump. To get us away from the trauma and tragedy of the credit crunch. Heaven forefend perhaps even a book that makes us laugh. By the way, where is the new Tom Sharpe? Has the humorous novel died a death? I was speaking to an editorial bod from Transworld recently, and he was telling me 'That they'd had their fingers burned recently with humorous fiction and so didn't feel brave enough to publish any more such titles.' So what is he doing, yes you got it, forensic crime pornography. You know the type. Page one. Slab on gurney and Lesbian Pathologist with her hand up to her elbows in innards, moving fleetly around on her Jimmy Choos listeneing to KD Lang wondering whether he niece will recover consciousness from her coma after stopping serial killers' chain saw with her iPod.
Batten down the literary hatches, Cheryl Cole's on her way dressed head to foot in Primarni. Serial killers beware. It's Charlies Angels time, but this time the right Charlie could be us.