The Great British Bump-Off Review (John Allison, Max Sarin)

Agatha Christie meets The Great British Bake-Off as one of the show’s contestants gets poisoned by another contestant - but whodunit?

John Allison and Max Sarin, the writer/artist team behind Giant Days, one of the greatest comics ever made, reunite for another book, The Great British Bump-Off. And yet, as much of an admirer as I am of their previous work, this is another of their non-Giant Days projects, like Wicked Things, that didn’t hit the spot.

The problem is the kind of writer Allison is and the kind of stories he’s trying to write. His comedic, slice-of-life style perfectly suits a light sit-com-y title like Giant Days - but really doesn’t fit in with his horror or murder mystery comics, like Steeple or Wicked Things or this book. The humour doesn’t so much undercut the drama or tone so much as it smothers it (Marvel has a similar problem with their movies - whatever the story, cram in as many silly jokes as you can, regardless of whether it’s suitable or not).

This approach neutralises any narrative tension in a story, making it boring and safe - this one’s not even a murder mystery, just a non-fatal poisoning mystery. I didn’t find anything that happened in the story the least bit exciting or interesting. The characters didn’t mean anything to me, and Allison really has a problem in writing the same protagonist for each of his books - Shauna is basically just Susan Ptolemy/Charlotte Grote/Shelley Winters - and I couldn’t have cared less whodunit.

Max Sarin’s art is excellent as always, really expressive and lends an energy to Allison’s script that isn’t otherwise there with his words alone. Primrose the cat is adorbs, the cake designs are imaginative and I liked the quirky detail of resurrecting famous food critic Fanny Cradock without explaining how (she died in 1994 - she’s also the only real-life figure in the story, though Pete Holyrood is obviously meant to be Paul Hollywood). Fanny’s appearance is wonderfully haunting, as it should be for a dead person!, and her zingers are really on point.

It is surprising to me that Allison is unable to capture the same brilliance he seemingly effortlessly was able to do in book after book of Giant Days in any of his other comics. Maybe he’ll do it again in another (non-genre) book one day, but he sure didn’t manage it in the flat and flavourless The Great British Bump-Off, although maybe if you’re a fan of “cosy” (ie. boring) mystery books by Richard Osman, then you might enjoy this.