CONTRARY TO WHAT they say on the back of thrillers, it's quite easy to get inside the mind of a psychopath. You don't have to bother with empathy. All you need is a gimmick and a childhood trauma to explain it. Add eccentricities and academic qualifications to taste.
Ben Elton stops after the childhood trauma, which is a sign of his professionalism: the killer is hard to spot in Past Mortem because they are no more interesting than anyone else. The gimmick is pretty flashy, though. Someone is murdering former school bullies, torturing them at length to the sound of nostalgic compilation CDs.
The construction of this book is efficient, but the detail of the writing is often slapdash - for a book in which childhood brutality is meant to be the driving force, Past Mortem conveys remarkably little of the texture of being at school.
Instead comes a sense of cynicism: the characters feel like an excuse for violence, sex, two or three good gags and a romantic subplot, rather than the reason for them.
Past Mortem by Ben Elton is published by Bantam Press, priced £17.99
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