Costume Not Included by Matthew Hughes

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Once again, I’m pitching into a book on religious themes and need to remind people that I’m an atheist and so you may detect bias in this review. When you read a book that advertises itself as the first in a new series, there’s always that moment of doubt when you come to the second book. Will the author manage the difficult trick of maintaining the standard of the first while moving us forward? Being born decades ago, the world of entertainment was dominated by the cinema and recording studios. If a Western hit the box office for a big take, Hollywood would immediately churn out half-a-dozen, hoping to catch the wave. If a singer or group blasted to Number 1 in the Hit Parade with the first single, the second would, more often than not, be a clone of the first. Indeed, other singers and groups would be looking to copy the track without actually infringing copyright. Think “Do You Love Me” as recorded by The Contours suddenly featured in the repertoire of Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, the Dave Clark Five and The Hollies. This is not a hundred miles from “Twist and Shout” which started off its life as “Shake It Up, Baby” recorded by The Isley Brothers, but was more successful when The Beatles recorded it. Which just goes to show that if someone, somewhere has a good idea, there are hundreds willing to jump on the bandwagon and thrash it to death.

Anyway, The Damned Busters by Matthew Hughes, To Hell & Back Book I was a very good book published last year and, as I might have predicted, it failed to win any prizes. This just goes to show I’m an infallible judge. No matter how well an author manages to hit the target with a fantasy book dealing with the sometimes fraught relationship between Heaven, Hell and humans on Earth, it’s going to offend all the Christians who have no sense of humour (probably most of them), and not appeal to the secularists because they don’t read books with religious themes — they act like reformed alcoholics being invited to read reviews of the latest crop of new French wines. So here we go with Costume Not Included (Angry Robot, 2012), the continuing struggles of Chesney Arnstruther to avoid his mother’s baleful influence while living the unassuming life of an actuary during the day and a caped crime fighter at night. Now we’ve got beyond the basic set-up with his demonic sidekick Xaphan to stage-manage the detection and apprehension bits for the maximum impact, it’s on to the announcement that his potential father-in-law Billy Lee Hardacre wants to proclaim Chesney as the next prophet, if not the Messiah. This does not exactly sit well with our hero, if that’s what he is. He feels fighting crime is quite enough excitement in his life. Except circumstances seem to be conspiring against his desire to have a quiet life.

Matthew Hughes producing the Klingon look just by thinking

This is hugely (the almost pun is intended) enjoyable on so many different levels. As a character, Chesney has lived in the shadow of autism all his life, having to learn how to read people and, where appropriate, simulate the right social responses to situations. He’s really only felt comfortable in solving mathematical problems. Manipulating numbers gives him certainty even when he’s modelling probabilities, i.e. trying to measure uncertainty. This has made him outstanding as an actuary but held back his career because he’s never been able to make and keep acquaintances, let alone friends. In the first book, he was increasingly forced out of his comfort zone and now finds himself in even more confusing waters. Yet, this time, his confidence in his ability to think has been boosted by the arrival of his first girlfriend and, by a stroke of good fortune, he also meets someone else with a healing touch. It’s a delight to watch him slowly open out and join the human race.

The second feature is the wonderful metafiction. Billy Lee Hardacre’s entire religious ministry is based on the notion that everyone from the angels to the lowest demons (and all the humans in between) are just characters in the book God is writing. With this in mind, he sets off to bend reality in his direction by writing a new “book”. In this worthy task, he’s helped by an angel. It seems God might be delegating some of the basic creativity to Billy Lee. Now all the new puppet master has to do is get Chesney to play ball and the world will soon be headed in the “right” direction. Except, of course, Billy Lee remains a character in God’s book and Satan might also have literary ambitions. In this Matthew Hughes has managed to construct one of these delightful wheels-within-wheels plots where all the major characters may shift in status from hero to cardboard cutout depending on who happens to be doing the writing. In many ways, it doesn’t matter who’s pulling the strings at any one time. The entire exercise is simple, unalloyed fun from start to finish.

I’m now going to repeat myself from the first review. Costume Not Included may not be “the” Good Book, but, as the second in this series, it’s certainly “a” good book that not only continues the themes of the first, but enriches them and moves us to a point where, instead of being a Batman, Chesney needs to become a one-man FEMA, such is the scale of the potential disaster left as a cliffhanger. Roll on Book III, preferably sooner rather than later. In this, note another nice illustration of key plot elements in the excellent cover art by Tom Gauld.

For all the reviews of books by Matthew Hughes, see:
Costume Not Included
The Damned Busters
The Other
Song of the Serpent
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