Book review: Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway

Angelmaker taught me you can have a story that lurches about like a skateboarder on acid wearing high heels eating one of those gourmet burgers that are so unfeasibly overfilled you realise it would be easier for everyone if you just ate the thing standing in a bin that could catch all the stuff that rains out the sides…and still get great Amazon reviews.  Oddball, quirky, steampunkish, barking mad and colourful, the characters are as implausible as the story but when you have this much indulgent fun writing it, as clearly Harkaway has, it’s a fun read, even to serious young insects like myself.  Maybe the other lesson is there is a publisher for every kind of book, even messy ones like Angelmaker. If I'd been his editor I would've killed him with an ornate Edwardian dresser with secret drawers full of dusty letters in an obscure dialect found only in Eastern Kazakhstan and a single key cunningly manufactured without a lock to fit it.