Sadly, TV Critic Omer Ali at Time Out, who is clearly a fan of sorts, wanted to like The Perfect Fool but found himself to compelled to compare it unfavourably to Killing Paparazzi by Robert M Eversz, and we must respect him for this. I think I can pull "excellent … especially good" out of this, but it would seem dishonest to do so. I was glad Omer noticed that I had tried to twist events this way and that, as plot device and emotional background, but sad that he thought I had failed roundly. At this stage I don’t get a knock to my ego from bad reviews, I just worry about how it will affect sales and the chance of getting to publish again.
"The main thing linking these 2 books is the central importance of an act of bestiality caught on camera acquires in both, as well as a female lead trying to escape her past. Excellent stand-up comedian Lee tries – as he does with all the conceits in his novel – to twist the event this way and that, as plot device and emotional background, but fails roundly…. Killing Paparazzi is zippy stuff, all the more so compared with Lee’s work, which tiringly takes us from Balham – bedsit territory where he’s at his best – to Arizona, involving, amongst other things, Hopi myths, the blooming Holy Grail, and Soviet space dog Laika, zzz … A list of comedians-turned-novelist would be longer than this review, and compared to most of them I wanted Lee to carry it off, but then I finally understood Emperor Josef II’s rebuke to Mozart, ‘too many notes’. ….. Lee spends the best of his efforts drawing his cast list together in ways that are all too obvious. The prose is mechanical, and fails to capture any of the visual elisions in his mind. This isn’t writing, it’s directing traffic."
Oh dear. That said, History
has shown Emperor Josef II to be wrong about WA Mozart, who is now
highly regarded, but dead.
