Sleb - Andrew Holmes

Felix Carter is famous, ‘properly’ famous, he’s the stylish, rough-and-ready, pop sensation every guy wants to be etc. etc.

Chris Sewell, a married, alcoholic, 30-something advertising executive is also famous, but only because he shot Felix Carter dead and is now the nation’s most infamous lifer, courting his adoring public from his prison cell. 

This 2003 publication was presumably re-released last month to cash in on our relentless obsession with celebrity, a phenomenon even author, Andrew Holmes, must have expected to have died down by now, but his satirical hero, Chris, who’s ‘fame’ is of the most questionable kind, is more relatable now than ever.

Sleb is chick-lit for men - an easy-going, readable, first-person caper, with plenty of guy-friendly criminal behaviour, minimal dialogue from fussy-females, vigilante displays of political and social power and frequent references to Star Wars, boozing, laddish behaviour and early Noughtie’s gadgetry. 

Despite this, Holmes - a journalist by trade and hence, well-trained in the art of organising sensationalised titbits into a page-turning news story – has constructed a layered, time-bending, ‘whodunnit’ style plot, even though we know who did it, as he tells us so himself fairly early on, but it’s the why and the how that the author tantalisingly drags out. 

Sleb is gory, messy and brash but even if that’s not your thing, Chris’ complicated motives should hold your interest until the end.