Friday, October 27, 2006
Tubewatch (20) tube fiction
• 253 (Geoff Ryman): 252 passengers on board an about-to-crash Bakerloo line train each get one page to tell their life story. And the driver makes 253. [got it, it's good]
• Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman): An underworld fantasy about "London Below", which looks suspiciously like the Underground but populated by the weird, the fantastic and the macabre. [got it, it's great]
• The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans (Arthur Conan Doyle): Sherlock Holmes tracks the mysterious murder of a government clerk whose body is found on the rails near Aldgate station. [read it, it's OK]
• King Solomon's Carpet (Barbara Vine): A bunch of London misfits, linked in various ways by the tube, are drawn to an old schoolhouse overlooking West Hampstead station. [got it, it's Rendell-icious]
• Tunnel Vision (Keith Lowe): A geeky groom spends the day before his wedding attempting to visit every station on the tube network. [got it, it's good]
• Underground (Tobias Hill): Someone's pushing women in front of tube trains, so a lonesome tube worker ventures down old tunnels to try to solve the mystery. [never read it]
• Metroland (Julian Barnes): A suburban 60s coming-of-age story, rather more about sex and idealism than anything Betjeman might have written. [never read it]
• The Rats (James Herbert): Gory 70s horror with mutant rats rising up out of the sewers and Underground to feast on unsuspecting Londoners. [read it, it's predictable]
• A Metropolitan Murder (Lee Jackson): "The last train of the night pulls into the gas-lit platform of Baker Street underground station. A young woman is found strangled, her body abandoned in a second-class carriage." [never read it]
• Geoffrey the Tube Train and the Fat Comedian (Alexei Sayle): I suspect the title tells you all you need to know [flicked through it, never bought it]
• Underground Ernie Annual 2007 (Joella Productions): The exciting adventures of every pre-schooler's favourite cheery tube worker and some talking trains. [I'll give it a miss, thanks]
• any more suggestions?
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