Book Review: Gently Go Man

A motorcyclist meets his death on a long straight road; just another teenage casualty? Maybe there is a more sinister explanation, one that is connected to jazz, disaffected young people and drugs.

Originally published in 1961 this instalment in Alan Hunter’s long running series of novels featuring George Gently, an old school trilby and pipe copper with a mind more open that might be expected, seems, at first to be rather dated. An impression confirmed by the provincial setting and the conflict between the stolid older generation and the hep talking youngsters. The whole thing could be read as a sort of literary equivalent to the British B movies of the same era.

Like those long forgotten B features though if you look past the surface it is possible to find something altogether more interesting. Hunter is writing about a post war Britain where people with narrow horizons are faced suddenly with unimaginable opportunities, making it a fertile breeding ground for moral panics on one side and a sort of confused radicalism on the other.

This is, as were all of Hunter’s Gently novels, an effective and well written thriller that knows just how far to push the boundaries of the genre. Gently Go man owes its republication to a popular Sunday night television series (very) loosely based on the characters Hunter created; it is though more than worth reading in its own right.

Gently Go Man
Alan Hinter
(Robinson, 2011)