In the aftermath of the 1981 Brixton riots, inner city policeman Detective Inspector Henry Hobbes has been ostracised by fellow officers after breaking ranks to stop a colleague carrying out a racist attack. Shipped out to “sleepy, leafy Richmond”, he is called to investigate the murder and mutilation of an up-and-coming singer named Brendan Clarke. It’s a journey that will take him to a memorial vigil in a field outside Hastings, a seedy Soho members’ club and a town called Edenville.
Murder victim Clarke turns out to have been an avid fan of charismatic glam rock star Lucas Bell, who killed himself a decade earlier but continues to inspire fierce devotion. Clarke was a moneyed collector of Bell memorabilia, some of which has gone missing from the scene. At the last gig before he was murdered, Clarke not only paid tribute to his hero with a set comprised of Bell cover versions, but assumed the mask of Bell’s most famous character: King Lost.
Echoes of David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane are perhaps inevitable in the fictional King Lost, and Noon has a Ballardian understanding of the intoxicating magic of celebrity, and its impact on a text. He masterfully casts the spell of Bell’s dark glamour with tinctures of Bowie – his absence rather than his presence – as well as shades of Marc Bolan and Richey Edwards.
Events move quickly, and as Hobbes deciphers a web of occult codes surrounding Clarke’s murder, and a disturbing childhood secret at the heart of Bell’s King Lost persona, Noon ups the stakes until the inspector finds himself facing mortal danger at every turn, including from within the force. DI Hobbes is (of course!) philosophical in response to the human cruelty he witnesses on the job. “Maybe you take after your namesake, Inspector?” someone observes.
Noon made his name in the 1990s with sui generis SF novels such as Vurt and Pollen that were distinctively homegrown and dreamlike. Slow Motion Ghosts is his first crime novel, and it’s a belter. Hobbes’s journey into the underworlds of occult obsession and police violence is rich in social and subcultural detail, and Noon’s storytelling is assured and compelling.
• Slow Motion Ghosts is published by Doubleday (RRP £16.99). To order a copy for £14.95, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99.
