In 2022, Bob Mortimer put out a crime novel that only Bob Mortimer could have written. Set in south London and starring a diffident solicitor named Gary Thorn, The Satsuma Complex had the usual parade of gangsters, bent coppers and femme fatales but also made room for talking squirrels and digressions about barn-owl crockery. As charmingly zany as you’d expect from the veteran comedian, it was niftily plotted too and went on to win the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction.
It also sold by the truckload, which may be a factor in Mortimer’s speedy return to the same terrain. The Hotel Avocado picks up where the first book left off, with Gary resuming his low-key life in Peckham while his girlfriend Emily sets about renovating her late father’s hotel in Brighton. The main drama in the first 100 pages hinges on whether Gary will uproot himself to help Emily with the hotel or, more probably, continue to be a noncommittal “shithouse” and stay in London.
Eventually, a threat emerges in the bequiffed form of Clive Sequence, a vape-smoking tough with a Mansfield accent who is hellbent on stopping Gary from testifying against corrupt policemen in a forthcoming trial. He has a habit of rubbing raw mince in people’s faces to underline his intentions. Could Brighton be a suitable place for Gary to hole up till the trouble blows over?
The bigger question is: can we be persuaded to care? The earlier book, for all its whimsicality, had an urgency to it that kept things rattling along. But none of the subplots here – about Emily trying to secure planning permission to install a large model avocado outside the hotel; about a new female employee at Gary’s office making moves on him; about his pub mate Andy building a bunker to sit out the apocalypse – add much oomph to the main storyline, which has itself been resurrected from The Satsuma Complex.
At 400 pages, The Hotel Avocado is a third longer than its predecessor, with half the action and intrigue. Which isn’t necessarily bad news. Part of the fun of reading Mortimer is watching him jam the plot gears so his characters can debate the merits of battenberg cake or “dark-dark” coffee. What other crime novels allow their narrators to imagine themselves walking down the street “with the largest box of washing powder that ever existed”, which they carry effortlessly over their shoulder “like a powerful mayor” to the astonishment of passersby?
There are plenty such moments, but they’re outweighed by the baggy exposition of a plot that doesn’t have enough momentum to justify the digressions. Gary was a bit of a limp character before, but now his haplessness is actively irritating and you can’t help but wonder what attractive women like Emily or his new colleague Roma see in him. It gives me no pleasure to report that The Hotel Avocado is a dud – two stars on Tripadvisor. Here’s hoping that Mortimer’s next fruit-related outing will be a riper proposition.
The Hotel Avocado by Bob Mortimer is published by Simon & Schuster (£22). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
