it's difficult grouping books together (and harder still to find snappy titles for the categories) - these are rollocking read-in-a-day without hurting your head books.
this started with a set piece that reminded me of tom sharpe, but then straightened out into a rollicking thriller. thankfully, to make up for the occasional fill-in-the-background boring conversations, the humour returns from time to time.
it's all good, entertaining and wholesome fun and violence. a dash of ben elton politics doesn't hurt the read, but does give it a dated feel - it's depressing to realise how little the labour government has changed things (one of the niggling points that makes me wonder just how much time the author has spent in scotland in the last decade is that, with this country a labour stronghold, much of the local authority corruption has been nothing to do with the tories).