Dead Clever
Scarlett Thomas
1998

To begin with, I should reveal that I think Scarlett Thomas is the most exciting British writer at the moment. I have been spellbound by every book of hers that I have read, and so I was intrigued to learn whether her first novel, Dead Clever, published in 1998, would be as fascinating as Popco (2004), The End of Mr Y (2006), and Our Tragic Universe (2010).

I discovered Thomas’s works in a way that you are always told not to do. I judged her book, The End of Mr Y, by its front cover. Come on, look at it…

 

Beautiful and enigmatic, with a review from Douglas Coupland calling it “A Masterpiece”, I was intrigued enough to read the blurb. From this little bit of information, I quickly decided to buy the book. I’m glad I did, as I can honestly say The End of Mr Y is without a doubt my favourite book of the 21^st century. High praise indeed.

I followed Mr Y with an earlier novel, Popco, which actually made me question a lot of things about the world and large corporations. Our Tragic Universe is another high concept book, which, as with the aforementioned novels, made my head swirl with the absolute cleverness and readability.

But this is about Dead Clever. As I said, I was intrigued as to whether the novel would stand up to the three I had put on a pedestal. After all, it is Thomas’s debut; she could be forgiven if it had taken her several years to find the magic combination to writing a brilliant book.

Dead Clever is different to the other books in that it is not a high concept book; it is a crime thriller following a failed actress/part-time university lecturer, Lily Pascale, who unwittingly becomes embroiled in a chase to solve the mystery of who raped and decapitated one of Lily’s students. Lily has only just moved to Devon to get away from her life in London (not to mention her cheating, boring boyfriend) and when she takes the job at the local university, the story of the murder and other strange incidents engage her curiosity.

Lily is not your typical sleuth, something that won me over from the start. She smokes heavily, gets dressed for a date in a petrol station toilets, and she isn’t some kind of uber-intelligent, super-observant detective who solves riddles with ease. Other than some childish investigative work with Eugénie (Lily’s childhood friend, and an interesting character, who I hope will feature further in the other Lily Pascale novels), Lily has no experience in solving murders. She is an ‘everyman’ investigator, which makes her much more vulnerable. Which in turn, left me more concerned for her welfare. She makes mistakes, she misses clues that she later knows she should have seen, and she simply doesn’t know what’s going to happen next.

That leads me to my next point. Another thing that makes Dead Clever – well, dead clever (oh dear) – is the fact that it isn’t as predictable as many crime novels. There are obviously suspects but it felt as though Thomas was leading me down blind alleys; I didn’t want to trust anyone in the book. On top of this, I was waiting for the predictable moment in the novel where Lily’s car would break down at the wrong time. It would undoubtedly happen inconveniently just as she was attempting to escape from the chasing murderer. Lily mentions that her Volvo struggling to start on more than one occasion, and it screamed out that the old cliché of the dodgy car at the vital moment was inevitability. I was just waiting for it to happen. It didn’t happen. There’s nothing about Dead Clever that seems clichéd or obvious. Thomas really does leave you guessing until the final pages, breathlessly reaching a great ending.

Dead Clever is a great book. It’s a confident page-turner that has left me wanting to read the next of the series. Is it as good as Popco, The End of Mr Y and Our Tragic Universe? No. As I previously mentioned, Dead Clever is Thomas’s first novel, and it simply doesn’t reach out as far as the other books. However, having read those before Dead Clever put it at a disadvantage. It is definitely a good piece of crime writing, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in a good read. Time for me to hunt down Thomas’s other books, I think.

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