Indelible

They’re a rum lot in Peter Helton’s Indelible, as my grandma would have said. The book’s hero is an artist and very reluctant PI with an, um, unusual love life – and he appears to be the sanest person around!

Chris Honeysett lives in a tumbledown house out in the sticks near Bath with fellow artist Annis (trouble with odd names is that you read them as something else – I spent most of the book wondering why he’d got an Annie and an Anne!) A chap called Tim, who doesn’t appear much, but who does online snooping for Chris, also gets to share Annis’s favours.

Indelible has a cracking opening when a car chase along a narrow country lane turns out not to be all that it seems. As a result of this, Chris finds himself back teaching at the private Bath Arts Academy and also organising an exhibition of work by former staff – not all of whom are that enamoured of being asked. But sinister graffiti, night-time visitors and a rather inventive killer put Chris and his eccentric colleagues at risk.

For those of us who’ve worked in art colleges, Indelible will ring very true, particularly when the free and easy atmosphere is threatened by a bean-counter. And the college feels pretty realistic, given the number of left-field set-ups in that part of the country.

The PI thread feels much slighter, and Chris’s reluctance to bother tracking down a husband who might be playing away from home doesn’t exactly boost it – and it’s all tied up a bit too quickly and neatly, almost as an afterthought.

Helton has a lovely, relaxed style, where the dialogue bounces off the page. Perhaps the book is a tad too quirky for its own good at times, but that main storyline kept me engrossed one wet weekend, and I immediately went to look for other novels by the author.