Dr. House as a Spy

The Gun Seller
Hugh Laurie

I used to adore spy thrillers when I was younger, particularly those churned out by Robert Ludlum, Frederick Forsyth and Ken Follett. I think I read John LeCarre way too late, around the time I started focusing on other genres but his books were good too and made me want to read all his older novels. Still, it's a fun genre. Especially at an impressionable age back when the Cold War was oh so real and somehow made me want to be a spy back when I was younger. Hahaha. Now it's rare for me to pick up a spy thriller.

Hugh Laurie is one hell of an actor. Fans of the medical drama House will certainly agree. Dr. House's acerbic wit is always spot on. His character is one you'd like to hate and yet can't help but love and admire at the same time. I also caught some appearance of Hugh Laurie on talk shows and he never failed to make me laugh on them. Films? Goodness, he was Geena Davis' husband in those Stuart Little films. Hahaha! Ooops, sorry. I mean I haven't really watched a lot of his films.

But Hugh Laurie is also a writer, apparently. And a good one at that.

I picked up this book because I love the guy and I'm happy to report that this one made me love him all the more.

What is the book all about though? Yes, it's an almost-spy thriller. Actually it's a spoof of the spy thriller and it's one enjoyable romp with the main man named Thomas Lang who turned down a job to assasinate someone only to find out that it was just the start of his misadventures with eh, the guy who hired him. Now the spooks of the Central Intelligence Agency of the USA are after him. Why? Because he learned a potentially damaging fact about a new weapon and why he is now compelled to do everything in his power to uh, stop its use. Even if it means infiltrating a terrorists cell. Or something to that effect.

Despite the apparent seriousness of the plot it's all fun, really. The good thing about this book is Thomas Lang himself. He has this self-deprecating humor not to mention a handful of witty barbs while placed in more than one dire predicament. He sort of reminded me of Harry Dresden except that Thomas Lang is British and well, I can't help it but I like British guys best for their dry humor.

Here are the first few lines of the book:

Imagine that you have to break someone’s arm.

Right or left, doesn’t matter. The point is that you have to break it, because if you don’t . . . well, that doesn’t matter either. Let’s just say bad things will happen if you don’t.

Now, my question goes like this: do you break the arm quickly - snap, whoops, sorry, here let me help you with that improvised splint - or do you drag the whole business out for a good eight minutes, every now and then increasing the pressure in the tiniest of increments, until the pain becomes pink and green and hot and cold and altogether howlingly unbearable?

Well exactly. Of course. The right thing to do, the only thing to do, is to get it over with as quickly as possible. Break the arm, ply the brandy, be a good citizen. There can be no other answer.

Unless.

Unless unless unless.

What if you were to hate the person on the other end of the arm? I mean really, really hate them.

This was a thing I now had to consider.

I say now, meaning then, meaning the moment I am describing; the moment fractionally, oh so bloody fraction­ally, before my wrist reached the back of my neck and my left humerus broke into at least two, very possibly more, floppily joined-together pieces.

The arm we’ve been discussing, you see, is mine. It’s not an abstract, philosopher’s arm. The bone, the skin, the hairs, the small white scar on the point of the elbow, won from the corner of a storage heater at Gateshill Primary School - they all belong to me. And now is the moment when I must consider the possibility that the man standing behind me, gripping my wrist and driving it up my spine with an almost sexual degree of care, hates me. I mean, really, really hates me.

How could you even think of not reading after that? Well if you didn't find that funny and somehow takes a hold of you from the very first page of the book then hey, that's ok too. We obviously have different taste in books. Or at least what makes us laugh.

So yes, you don't read this for the action although there are plenty. You read this for entertainment and it is quite enjoyable. You know, the kind that is written by someone with a finely tuned ear to international politics and its business side, knows his James Bond and goes the other way around in providing the laugh-out loud capers involved in the plot. Yeah, Thomas Lang is like a funnier version of James Bond sans uh, everything - Q, the gadgets, the car, the ladies. Hahaha.

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