Discover that the gooseberry may be white, yellow, green or red, and may have a prickly, hairy or smooth surface. Doesn’t say a word about whether it’s a summer fruit or not. Expect Alan Coren knows about that kind of thing, what with Gardeners’ Question Time and everything . . .

Doesn’t say a lot for her buttocks.

Give up.

Decide to write review from memory. Fake it convincingly. Right. No problem. This philosophy professor, wants to be a private eye, name of, name of, anyway, he’s written all these books on Kierkegaard or possibly it was Wittgenstein, one of that mob, honest-to-goodness philosophy professor, earns good money, married with children, gives it all up, becomes a San Francisco private dick.

Was vaguely expecting something tacky, like this book I read once, forget the title, My Life as a Private Eye Including Fifteen Surefire Ways to Cheat on Your Spouse Without Getting Caught, something like that, or else maybe sub-Chandler stuff, “Dame walks into my office, figure that’d get Descartes to come up with a new Proposition, sent my pulse rate over the speed limit, buttocks like thrusting gooseberries,” and was pleasantly surprised it’s neither.

Not tacky.

Philosophy professor finds true happiness as penniless Sam Spade. Reads The Maltese Falcon a lot between cases. Good writer. Finds thirty thousand dollars of drug money under the floorboards of an attic. Gets kidnapped child out of India. Tries to save fitted-up Chinese-American from electric chair. Or gas chamber. One of those. Forget my own head next. Decides detection is Real Life. Never happier. Photo on the cover of the book: crinkly eyes, good man in a tough spot, copy of The Maltese Falcon open on his lap.

Wish I could remember his name. Begins with L, or S. Or P, maybe.

Best sections are long, boring bits, sitting in cars waiting for people who never show, pissing into Styrofoam cups. Convinced me I didn’t want to be a private dick. Glad someone else is doing it, though.

Good private eye could find anything. Even copy of Gumshoe with gold cover. Probably look in most obvious place. Probably just sit down at desk, casual glance to the left, look over to stack of books writer’s promised to review at some time or other . . .

Shit.

Gold cover.

Author’s name Josiah Thompson. Book called Gumshoe, though; remembered that much. Says on the cover “The best book ever written about the life of the private eye.”

I’d go along with that.

This is a true account of what happened when I was asked to review Josiah Thompson’s Gumshoe, written for and first published in Punch, 1989.

SIMCITY

Cities are not people. But, like people, cities have their own personalities: in some cases one city has many different personalities—there are a dozen Londons, a crowd of different New Yorks.

A city is a collection of lives and buildings, and it has identity and personality. Cities exist in location, and in time.

There are good cities—the ones that welcome you, that seem to care about you, that seem pleased you’re in them. There are indifferent cities—the ones that honestly don’t care if you’re there or not; cities with their own agendas, the ones that ignore people. There are cities gone bad, and there are places in otherwise healthy cities as rotten and maggoty as windfall apples. There are even cities that seem lost—some, lacking a center, feel like they would be happier being elsewhere, somewhere smaller, somewhere easier to understand.