The Proof of My Innocence by Jonathan Coe Review

Political blogger Christopher Swann attends a conservative conference, uncovers secrets and gets killed - but whodunit? The answer lies somehow in an obscure 1980s novel called My Innocence, the last book by conservative writer Peter Cockerill - or more precisely, an early proof copy of that book…

A new Jonathan Coe novel is always a good thing and, while I wouldn’t put The Proof of My Innocence up there as among his best, it’s an enjoyable enough read to make it worthwhile for all fans of this author.

Coe’s approach is more playful than usual, dividing up the lion’s share of the book into three parts, each one lampooning a trendy literary genre today: Part 1 Murder at Wetherby Pond is “A Cosy Crime Mystery”, Part 2 The Shadow Chamber is “A Dark Academia Story”, and Part 3 Proof/Reborn is “An Essay in Autofiction”.

Despite not being a fan of cosy anything in fiction, the first part was very entertaining and easily the best section of the novel. This concerns the build-up and murder, followed by the introduction of the delightful character of Detective Inspector Prudence Freeborne, and an examination of the key suspects.

The Shadow Chamber is where the novel ground to a halt for me. It’s presented as a memoir of a retired student of Cambridge from the 1980s when many of the key players from the first part were youngsters beginning their path to power during Mrs Thatcher’s administration.

Not a great deal happened in this part with lots of dull plummy talk and an underwhelming and quite silly reveal of what really happens in a conservative professor’s salons at the end. I’ve read exactly one dark academia book - Donna Tartt’s The Secret History - so am far from being an expert in this genre, but I feel like Coe didn’t quite nail this one. The balance was slanted far more in the academia direction and not enough in the dark.

Things pick up slightly in Proof/Reborn as the story returns to the present and the murder victim’s daughter and her friend decide to solve the case themselves. It’s periodically enjoyable - I did want to find out whodunit - but also dragged in places as Coe ambled towards the conclusion, trying to make a point about modern conservatism, the way people think today and other things that I definitely failed to grasp.

Also: autofiction? That is the worst literary genre of all time. Karl Ove Knausgaard and his loathsome ilk can shove right off. “My Struggle” is an apt description of what it’s like reading his ghastly “prose” and suffering through his endlessly odious self-absorption.

The book covers appearing throughout are explained in the end, so not only do we find out whodunit but we get another surprise in the framing of what we’ve just read too, which is clever. It also explains quite why so much of the preceding story had so many coincidences - characters’ names sharing the same letters, the many interpretations of the clue the murder victim wrote in his blood - not to mention the cliched conceit of having the villain monologue their motivations. Although the second reveal closes the book quite tidily too; another layer of conceit to the novel!

Coe’s point in this book seems to be that, since Thatcher, Britain has adopted similar values to Reagan’s America - every man for himself, individualism above all else, no social safety net - and the country has become the poorer for it. Whereas, pre-Thatcher, we lived in a more conscientious, united country, one that created the NHS, etc.

He illustrates the death of the older world by setting the story in September 2022 when the Queen died, and the failures of conservatism with the appointment of Liz Truss as Prime Minister, whose disastrous administration was the shortest in British history (49 days) and tanked the already woeful Covid economy still further.

Whether it’s true that that’s how we got to where we are now, or whether his view of Britain is accurate isn’t for me to say, because I have no idea (although I suspect there’s a smidge more to it than that), but it’s an intriguing viewpoint.

(Incidentally, like his murder victim, Coe has also been writing about conservatism for many years now, especially in books like What a Carve Up! and Number 11, both of which form a small series featuring the Thatcherite Winshaw family - of whom, Josephine Winshaw weirdly cameos in this book too. So… Proof is also set in that same world?)

I would’ve preferred if Coe had fully committed to the locked room murder mystery storyline for the entire book instead of just part of it, because Coe is more than adept in that style and the succeeding, differing parts were definitely lacklustre in comparison. But there were moments in those other parts that were decent, Coe’s writing is as excellent as ever, and I enjoyed the novel well enough - worth a look if you’re a fan of the author and/or genre fiction, though I wouldn’t expect a consistently high quality story in The Proof of My Innocence.