Books like Dead Air

What the critics (may have allegedly) said:Dear Iain, please gain a little perspective and paint over your current social wallpaper; don your I heart Tony Blair t-shirt and form an orderly queue at the passport office.What the monkey says:Loved this! Admittedly this is my first foray into the world of Iain Banks (with or without the .M as I've never read any of his sci-fi either) but it did what it said on the tin. Pacey, engaging story of a gob-on-a-stick British shock jock and his whimsical antics. Ok Ken Nott is possibly the human equivalent of the congealed gunk scraped off the underside of the News of the World staff canteen microwave, but lets not dwell on that fact. Nott smokes, snorts and gurgles his way through the sparkly world of Londons media glitterati, leaving the shells of exploded verbal bombs and the prone bodies of shagged women in his wake. Although his initial passage through the novel did seem to be lubricated by a fair dollop of oleaginous smug, this soon dries up when he falls for a gangsters moll and in moment of lust-lorn, hormonally lobotomised stupidity leaves a sloppy message on her home answer phone. Cue a race against time as Nott struggles to hit the erase button before hubby gets home and dials 1471 and in all likelihood parts Nott from his manhood by way of a response. So, to summarise, booze, birds, sex, drugs, gob-shites, gangsters and improbable set up regarding an answering machine message.