Andy Hamilton - The Star Witness

Rating: 5/5

Review:
An excellent book

I thought this was an excellent book.  Andy Hamilton is one of Britain's best comedy writers for the screen with a string of successes like Outnumbered and Drop The Dead Donkey on television and Old Harry's Game on Radio 4 among many others.  Screenwriters, though, however good, don't always make good novelists – but Hamilton has produced a genuinely good novel here, which is readable, funny, insightful and genuinely touching in places.

The Star Witness is a kind of contemporary morality tale of fall and at least partial redemption, narrated in the first person by Kevin Carver, a hugely successful middle-aged soap star, who is accused of assaulting his young girlfriend (and fellow star).  The inevitable "trial by media" and social media savaging follows, and the novel deals with Kevin's personal story through the subsequent developments – some of which are very unexpected.

Hamilton creates a cast of excellent, believable characters, and his dialogue is brilliantly authentic, of course.  Kevin's internal narration is also very good as he begins as an arrogant, dismissive man with an inexhaustible supply of cynical responses (some of which are very funny) and then deals with the crisis which engulfs him.  There is the mix of wit, intelligent social observation and real human insight which anyone familiar with Andy Hamilton's work will be familiar with.  It's extremely readable with some laugh-out-loud moments and there are some excoriating portraits and brilliantly cynical one-liners and observations about contemporary culture.   But, as always in Hamilton's work, there is compassion and kindness running through it and one scene quite late on where a minor character begins to sing genuinely had my eyes pricking with tears.  

This is a funny, intelligent and thoroughly enjoyable book which also has some important things to say, in that way where you notice afterward rather than battering you over the head with Important Pronouncements.  It's a great read and warmly recommended.

(I was kindly sent an ARC by the publisher.)