Books and Musicals in Seattle!: October 2nd, 2011

Thursday, October 27, 2011

October 2nd, 2011 - The Gun Seller

The Gun Seller, written by Hugh Laurie - yes THE Hugh Laurie, more on that later - is a tale starring a sarcastic, loner, but eminently capable Thomas Lang who can play many different roles very well.

Sound familiar?

Ok, it's later. When I mean THE Hugh Laurie, I mean Dr. House in House, Mr. Palmer in Sense and Sensibility, the voice of myriad animated characters, and apparently he was in Spice World? We love him best when he plays sarcastic, loner, eminently capable characters because we know he has a soft silly side.

In regards to The Gun Seller ever being made into a movie, he implied that it would be nice to play a small cameo part but he imagined they'd want someone stellar and action-figure like to play Mr. Lang.

He published this the year just after Spice World came out, just to put that comment in perspective.

Also he is now a musician. Life just isn't fair sometimes.

Anyway, back to the book. The Gun Seller is amazingly well-written with the zingers flying left and right and twists and turns in plot and lots of mystery. But mostly you just want to take Thomas Lang and snuggle him so he can be sarcastic but snuggle you back. Because that's how he is. Sadly, he's just too busy saving the world from evil corporate multi-rotor ( I don't actually know if that was the thing that made them technologically advanced but something high techy) helicopters that can besiege a city faster than you can blink.

More importantly, there's not really a lady worth him snuggling until three quarters of the way through (so you can pretty much ignore her) - which was smart on Laurie's part because then all the snuggle-worthy ladies out there have their sights set on him, because Lang is Laurie in a fictional world where there are evil corporate multi-rotor helicopters that need stopping.

I know I made that sound a little frivolous, but there was a lot of thought behind the twists and turns and conspiracies of the plot. In fact, every once in a while I double checked the copyright date of this book because it was written in 1998 but he seems to allude to 9/11 and how Americans view terrorism when they're not a victim of it and how that would change if, flying spaghetti monster-forbid, anything should happen. (it was a pretty spot-on prediction in my opinion. )