Police Detective Arthur Wallace spends a lot of his time running over in his head ‘what would Kurt Russell do?’ Fully aware of the dissonance between his internal fears that he would never measure up to his hero, he never-the-less seems to have a knack for getting himself into tricky situations worthy of an action hero. When he tracks down a serial murderer, the suspect turns out to be a woman who moves with inhuman speed, he is rewarded with a sword in the chest. When he awakes in hospital he is met by a strange woman who tells him that the world is going to end and he is the man to stop it...

No Hero (376 Pages) is the first novel by Jonathan Wood. The dark urban fantasy takes us on a journey with Arthur, through the sleepy streets of Oxford, whose dreaming spires hide a world consisting of multiple realities and invading monsters.

Creating humour in a novel is difficult enough, outright comedy is almost impossible. Partially because humour, unlike horror isn’t always universal, so what will tickle me may not even raise an eyebrow in another. I mention this because No Hero’s jacket is festooned with wondrous quotes extolling the novels virtues of being exceedingly funny and the best book one reader had read all year. That’s a lot to live up to and a possible big disappointment in the making.

I’ll admit that I found the story amusing at times, but certainly not a rib tickling joy and I’m trying to work out whether my expectations were initially raised so high that the novel could never have lived up to the expectation created, or whether the book wasn’t as funny as it should be.

Central to the problem is Arthur himself and his continual self-deprecation, which in small doses put a comedic spin on Arthur’s external heroic antics and his opposite internal dialogue. The problem is that this little trick is overused to the point where Arthur becomes somewhat annoying, not good in your central character.

It’s a good solid read, Wood spends time in developing his characters so that they end up in a place different to the one they started in, even Arthur’s propensity for swearing, thankfully declines as the story unfolds.

It is the first novel in a sequence, so I guess you have to forgive the almost standard eldritch creatures invade the earth theme. Only time will tell if Wood can further develop the idea of an under funded government agency out to save the world into more than just a fun ride.

6

Charles Packer