Perhaps best known for his political comedy screenwriting credits on shows like The Thick of It, and his Emmy-award-winning work on Veep, David Quantick’s new novel, Ricky’s Hand sees quite the departure from political satire and sees him push further into the kind of absurdist humour we’ve witnessed in shows like HBO’s Avenue 5.
The novel follows Ricky Smart, a tabloid paparazzo who spends his time cruising Miami Beach trying to snap celebs in compromising positions. Ricky is under no illusions that his own existence couldn’t be further from the glamorous lifestyle he stalks, but it’s a living and he’s pretty good at it. Unfortunately for Ricky, he has woken up one morning to find his hand has been replaced with someone else’s. Larger, hairier and with the word F**K tattooed across the fingers. It still functions perfectly well as hand, it’s just not Ricky’s hand.
Despite the fact that he now has someone else’s hand attached to the end of his arm, Ricky is still desperately in need of a pay day. So, when pop superstar Scala Jaq is rumoured to be staying in a nearby hotel, Ricky can only hope that his new fingers will still able to press the shutter on his camera.
After spending a day lurking in hotel corridors, Ricky (and his new hand’s) clandestine camerawork captures the fact that Scala is hiding a body-swap-secret of her own. And following a spate of coincidences, the pair decide to team up in an attempt to uncover the mystery of their newly interchanged body parts. Inadvertently putting them directly in the path of a dysfunctional A.A. group, a messianic time-cop and a criminal family akin to the Fratellis…
Although set in Miami, there’s a beautiful Britishness to the comedy of the characters’ reactions, exhibiting a delightful level of grump and disdain for the unfairness and assault on logic and common sense that their situations present to them. And while not as laugh-out-loud funny as perhaps you’d expect, the book remains a joyous blast of the bizarre.
Structured around a truly unique (though scientifically questionable) sci-fi premise that doesn’t waste time with intricacies or justification, it still leaves space for moral quandaries and introspection without ever getting bogged down.
Packed with heartfelt characters and a supremely silly setup, Quantick’s fun and frivolous redemption tale is a perfect page-tuner.
Ricky’s Hand by David Quantick is out now. Read more reviews from SciFiNow here.