Mick Jagger, Debbie Harry, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and David Bowie walk into a bar. Could this be the first line of some convoluted joke, maybe? Well, no – because murder is a serious business, is it not?
The famous fivesome in question call themselves The Okay Boomers, and you’ll find them playing in the Bull’s Head in Barnes, South West London, on a Sunday night. And as you might have guessed, they aren’t the real people. Taking a leaf out of the book of popular television series The Masked Singer, the band members do everything in their power to keep their identities a secret, including wearing specially designed and hugely realistic face masks.
In reality, Mick is TV personality Jimmy Clark, a former actor, sometime journalist and self-acclaimed national treasure who would go to the opening of an envelope. Bowie? He’s Charlie Brougham, best known for his roles in rom-coms and TV adaptations of classic novels, while Macca is the ‘people’s poet’ Craig Francis. Debbie Harry is one-time stand up comic, now successful impressionist Hazel Bloom. Under the Dylan mask is a former soccer star, better known these days as a controversial political pundit, Larry Benyon.
They’re all mates, and they’ve been keeping up this charade for a while, performing at the Bull’s Head under a range of names and fancy masks. It’s all just a bit of fun until, at an impromptu after-party following the Okay Bookers’ gig, someone dies… wearing the Jagger mask.
Now it’s a case for DI Jim Garibaldi – that’s right, like the biscuit – a Met detective who doesn’t drive, so gets to crime scenes on his bike, has a penchant for poetry and country music, and who is fond of dropping unwanted and obscure quotations into conversations. Like TV’s Ludwig, Garibaldi is something of a one-off, and this is his fourth outing in print.
Bernard O’Keeffe has created a hugely likeable, if sometimes annoying, figure in Garibaldi. He’s a great one for thinking outside of the box, much to the irritation of his superiors. But if it gets the job done, surely there’s no harm in that? There’s a solid crime story within these pages, but the author takes the usual police procedural route while adding some gentle humour to send it off in new directions, keeping the pages turning and the reader smiling in the process.
At the scene of the murder, it soon becomes clear that the hugely expensive masks have gone missing. As the case gathers momentum, they begin to make appearances at the most inopportune moments. The band members are getting increasingly skittish, and Garibaldi is convinced that they aren’t giving him the whole picture.
How right he is! The Masked Band uses a light brush to lay bare the modern-day cult of celebrity and how it inexplicably keeps us all in its thrall. Behind every botoxed, primped and gym-honed exterior, it seems, there are things that these B-listers would much prefer not to be made public.
Yes, there are laughs along the way but the book still has a message to convey – and it does it with skill and subtlety. Garibaldi’s beloved Barnes is portrayed in all its semi-gentrified glory, and while riding pillion on his trusty bike, we readers are offered glimpses of the place that probably are only known to locals.
This is my first foray into DI Garibaldi’s world, and my appetite has been whetted for more. It makes a refreshing change to spend time with a police officer who at times reminds me of Columbo, but with a much better wardrobe. This one was a real pleasure to read.
Also see the Vinyl Detective novels by Andrew Cartmel.
Muswell Press
Print/Kindle
£10.42
CFL Rating: 4 Stars
