Title: Manchester Slingback
Author/Artist: Nicholas Blincoe
Publisher: Picador
Media: Book
Reviewer: Pan
In a particularly apposite instance of synchronicity, I came across a copy of the biography of James Anderton (the religious zealot who used to run Manchester’s police force), whilst reading Nicholas Blincoe’s latest - ‘Manchester Slingback’, published by Picador.
Not that I’m saying you need to read ‘God’s Cop’ - (Michael Prince, New English Library) - to enjoy or understand Blincoe’s book, but rather that it serves to remind us of the real mania of the man who had been at the helm of Britain’s second biggest police force. Anderton is the man who launched a crusade against filth, pornography and political subversion, which meant raids on gay bars, bookshops and publishers (like Savoy Books for example) and collusion with the National Front.
Blincoe’s book is set in that same era, though thanks to our libel laws ‘God’s Cop’ is here transformed into an acolyte of John Anderton - one John Pascal to be exact. And although the names have changed the atmosphere comes across as depressingly authentic, the routine harassment of gays and pornographers a reminder of those days back in the 80’s. And, just as it was then, while Pascal/Anderton see Soddom and Gomorrah in the grimy streets of Manchester, the real horrors are taking place in the children’s homes outside the city.
Rent-boys, outrageous queens, Bowie clones and kids running away from institutionalised abuse; Blincoe paints a vivid picture of life in the dark underbelly of our second city. The story is all the more harrowing at times because Blincoe doesn’t make a big deal of what was going on in the kids homes. He doesn’t revel in the horror to the detriment of his story or its characters, and the book’s stronger because of it. The abuse is just another fact of life, just like police raids on queer bars and porn shops.
Like all of Blincoe’s books, this one is shot through with a humour so black it almost makes you choke. This doesn’t have the same edge of weird inventiveness that featured so strongly in ‘Jello Salad’ (I for one will never forget how one of the characters is tied to a wooden beam in that book...), but somehow this is a stronger book. If you really want darkness, then this is the place to find it, it’s everything that crime fiction ought to be.