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Jonathan Coe: The Proof of My Innocence

Jonathan Coe is back to his political satire in this book. His What a Carve Up! (US: The Winshaw Legacy) remains one of the best English novels of the twentieth century. In that book he savaged a woman prime minister, Margaret Thatcher or, more particularly, those who followed her. Here it is the turn of another woman prime minister, Liz Truss. If you are not British and have not heard of her, do not be surprised. She was prime minister for a mere seven weeks, in which time she managed to trash the economy. When she went to the US, nominally to support Trump in his 2004 presidential campaign, even the right-wingers who supported Trump had not heard of her. Truss has been associated with a shady group of right-wing groups centred around 55 Tufton Street in London and, as we shall see, these groups are key to this novel.

I will mention one other British peculiarity that plays a role in this book. If you travel by train in the UK you will sooner or later hear an announcement telling you to report anything suspicious to the British Transport Police which will be followed by the stupid phrase See It Say It Sorted.The phrase has been mercilessly mocked in the UK and people are tired of hearing it. One Transport Minister promised to get rid of it. He has long since departed. The phrase has not. Coe not only mocks it in this book, it plays a role in the plot. Just to help his French translator, I have translated it into French. Regardez Racontez Résolu.

The book opens with this issue as we follow a woman detective who is following a suspect on a train and is about to arrest him when she is interrupted by a See It Say It Sorted announcement.

We next move to Phyl. She has recently graduated from university and now has a job making sushi at a sushi bar at Heathrow Airport, some distance away from Rookthorne where she lives with her parents. Her mother is Joanna, a vicar and her father, Andrew, a retired quantity surveyor who has a large amount of books, some of which he is trying to get rid of. We see the age gap as he likes watching old black and white British comedies (as Coe does) and Phyl endlessly watches old episodes of Friends. We also see the changes in the village as a new out-of-town shopping mall has opened and the high street is run down. Coe is keen on state-of-the nation commentaries. Indeed, it is while walking in he high street that Phyl sees several cosy detective stories in a charity shop and, having had no idea what she wants to do with her life, decides to write a cosy mystery.

Joanna has invited Christopher, an old friend from Cambridge University which they attended (at the fictitious St Stephen’s College)and which Andrew specifically did not. Christopher is deemed to be pompous and he and Joanna talk about Cambridge leaving Andrew and Phyl somewhat out of the picture. However we learn that Christopher is investigating TrueCon, a dubious right-wing group, clearly based on 55 Tufton Street, mentioned above and whose key members include people he knew at Cambridge. TrueCon is having a conference, open to all who pay the admission at Wetherby Hall in the village of Wetherby Pond which is fictitious. However aficionados will recognise Wetherby Pond as the name of the character played by Alastair Sim in the film The Happiest Days of Your Life, which Andrew had been watching earlier in the book. The conference opens on the day Liz Truss becomes prime minister.
Christopher is, of course, very much in the midst of the enemy and it is not helped when he proves the Wetherby family were slave traders. He clashes with a few people. Three things of note happen during the conference. Liz Truss becomes prime minister. Queen Elizabeth II dies. Not surprisingly, Christopher is found brutally murdered. A woman police officer, presumably the one we met at the beginning, who is to retire the next day, is on the case and we now move into whodunnit territory.

We also go off on another tangent, albeit an interesting one Joanna and Christopher were at Cambridge with a man called Brian who has recently died and had given Joanna the manuscript of his memoirs of his time at Cambridge, in which we learn about Cambridge, how the UK extreme right was nurtured in Cambridge at that time, with a bit of help from the US and that the 1980s really started in 1985. We meet various characters who we will meet forty year later at the conference where Christopher is murdered, particularly Richard Wagstaff and Rebecca Wood who seem to have all sorts of devious right-wing ideas and, indeed, have seemingly been plotting for some time.

There are two other key characters. Peter Cockerill was a novelist who had criticised the fact that the British novel had been taken over by those of left-wing persuasion. (Some are mentioned by name though obviously we could add one name that us missing – Jonathan Coe.)
When his books extolling old-fashioned British values do not sell, he commits suicide. However he has been rediscovered by a university academic, Professor Richard Wilkes, and indeed Wilkes is to speak about him at the Wetherby Pond conference.

Finally there is Rashida, the adopted daughter of Christopher who emerges after the death of Christopher and she and Phyl soon become close friends, so much so that they work together in solving the murder, coming up with various theories and even gallivanting round Europe in pursuit of the guilty, sometimes aided and encouraged and/or discouraged by the not yet retired police officer.

So we have a story of right-wing plotting and those investigating it, a story of what happened in Cambridge during the period when Coe himself was at Cambridge, a murder followed by a complicated whodunnit style investigation with the inevitable misleading clues and, of course the lives of various characters. We also have a series of dichotomies: right-wing vs left-wing, Boomers vs Gen Z, the male point of view vs the female point of view and what appears to be key for Coe, the contrast between the age of community pre-1985 (and pre-mobile phone) and the post-1985 everyone for themselves attitude.

Coe raises some interesting ideas but once again tells a superb story with a lot of political background, humour and the added bonus of a clever whodunnit. There is no doubt in my mind that this is his best novel since What a Carve Up! (US: The Winshaw Legacy) and highly recommended whatever your political views, age group or sex/gender.

Publishing history

First published in 2024 by Viking