Fool's Mate

Book excerpt: Rafe ffoxe-Gentry, a snooty, upper-class Englishman working for GTG, a crooked multinational based in the mythical Australian state of Galahnia, is a rakish womaniser, whose nightly Got Laid Parades terminate abruptly when he falls for his Russian wifes beautiful and eccentrically brilliant young niece, Venetia. Put in charge of a visiting delegation of Russians negotiating a commercial agreement between GTG and the USSR, with Venetia as interpreter, Rafe finds the Soviet delegates more interested in booze, nightclubs, and women than in discussions. During negotiations in Singapore, the riotous behaviour of the sozzled Soviets leads to threatening Cold War complications, major disaster being narrowly averted by Venetias ingenuity. Rafe returns triumphantly home, only to find himself in even greater trouble as the situation becomes unexpectedly perilous, homicidal and dismayingly revelatory. His affair with Venetia, once wildly sexual and heart-breakingly romantic, now degenerates into a series of despairing battles between love and hate. In turn sensual, brutal, satirical and witty, this riotous black comedy depicts the greed, corruption and madness of the H-bomb eighties, and spares no one, including its madcap hero, in its scathing portrait of an era as unrestrained and vicious as it was violent and grasping.