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Rankin is a rampant humorist. His books are chaotic, hilarious and bizarre. At their best they combine a good story with wild humour and a good dash of the occult. At their worst they are self-indulgent. I would strongly recommend the Brentford trilogy (first three below) as an introduction to Rankin; I don't think he's every bettered them with the possible exception of Armageddon, the Musical. Rankin is the rare of example of an author who does very well in the UK, with an impressive list of books in print, but has made very little impact in the US. Amazon list a number of his books as out of print, but have few, if any, current US versions.

Still, this is something worth sampling from a more distant bookshop - if you live in the US and you've never tried Rankin, this is SF humour as you've never seen it before - superb stuff.

The Brentford Series

The Antipope.
The first in the Brentford trilogy sees likeable layabout Jim Pooley and professionally unemployed ladies man John Omally pitted against the forces of darkness, with more than a little help from the mysterious Professor Slocombe. Although it's often difficult to empathise with Rankin's characters, there's rich humour in these books, especially with the juxtaposition of the very ordinary streets of Brentford and some very extraordinary happenings.

The Brentford Triangle.
Once more Pooley and Omally, aided only by the Professor and a few swift pints at the Flying Swan save the world, and specifically Brentford, in this case from a particularly nasty case of alien invasion. Effortless madness that's a joy to read.

East of Ealing.
Dark forces move into Brentford, bringing barcodes on the forehead (as foretold in the Book of Revelation). Luckily Pooley and Omally are there to save the day. Throw in a robot shopkeeper, an excess of sprouts and the usual Rankin mix of humour, the occult and mayhem to produce the third of the original Brentford trilogy.

The Sprouts of Wrath The fourth Brentford book doesn't quite hit the humorous heights of its predecessors (if only because of the lack of closure in the ending), but an essential to complete your Pooley and Omally collection.

The Brentford Chainsaw Massacre
Fifth of the Brentford books finds our heroes back on form, if faced with a more recent Rankin approach to writing - a bit less humour, a bit more horror. As always he is dramatically free with his characters and cast, combining the efforts of a mad scientist to clone Jesus and an ancient document (the Brentford Scrolls) which allow Brentford to celebrate the millennium two years earlier and bring in an new age of enlightenment ... maybe.   New 27 January 1999

 The Witches of Chiswick
Brentford returns as a favourite Rankin theme, but with new characters, particularly Will Starling, who is plunged back from an unpleasant 23rd century to Victorian times, where in classic Rankin fashion he encounters a good mix of historical characters. A couple of Rankin favourites - Barry the time sprout (what is it about this man and sprouts?) and the faker/mystic Hugo Rune conspire to make the plot even more complex.  New 11 September 2003

 The Witches of Chiswick

Knees up Mother Earth
A sequel to Brentford-set The Witches of Chiswick. Property developers are planning to destroy the borough's beloved football ground and build executive homes on the site. Shock! Outrage! Horror! Something must be done to halt this iconoclasm. The lads of The Flying Swan, Brentford's most celebrated drinking house, take up the challenge. Norman the corner shopkeeper has some ideas. He's recently discovered a Victorian computer which holds the plans to the secret super-technology of a bygone age. And Archroy, Brentford's lone yachtsman and explorer, has just returned from his seventh voyage, bringing with him the fabled Golden Fleece. There's Jim Pooley and John Omally, unemployed bachelors of this parish. And that Victorian time traveller who's crash-landed on the allotments. Surely with all these stalwarts working for the cause, Brentford's football ground can be saved? Would it were so, but this is Brentford and ancient forces of evil are forever stirring in the borough: Old Testament terrors, Lovecraftian loathsomes and beasties from the bottomless pit. And if the team make it through to the final, it's going to be a match that no one will forget. What with the fate of mankind hanging upon the result. And everything. New 11 August 2004

The Armageddon Trilogy

Aramageddon, the Musical
With Elvis as a hero on a sprout-powered time travel journey into a future where Buddhavision has a huge network following and the Dalai Lama is a big star, what more can you ask but a bunch of aliens who consider the Earth to be the biggest ever soap opera. Makes a fascinating comparison with the Pratchett/Gaiman comedy about the end times, Good Omens, which strangely also features Elvis.

 They Came and Ate Us - Armageddon II, the B movie.
Rex and Gloria Mundi, Elvis, Barry the time sprout, Elvis, Christeen, Rambo Bloodaxe and more are back in an adventure that finds things going wrong in paradise, and Rex transported back to the 1990s, where Elvis is already attempting unsuccessfully to dispose of the diabolical President Wormwood. A little looser in structure than the first book (as such, more typically Rankin), but still works superbly, with 12 demons loose in the Net to wreak havoc.  New 11 September 2003

 The Suburban Book of the Dead - Armageddon III, the remake.
We're back in the future paradise, but Rex and Christeen aren't happy for long, as their old friend Elvis starts turning up in the strangest of places. A good, solid finale to the trilogy.  New 11 September 2003

 Apocalypso
Porrig, hero of Apocalypso has a bad attitude that makes even his parents dislike him, but he inherits a shop from a conjuror uncle--a shop which serves as a gateway to other worlds. Not only has he to redeem his uncle from damnation, he also has to save the world from an unpleasant alien vegetable with the power to cloud human minds. It sounds intriguing, but to be honest it's not one of our favourite Rankins. The plot is too ordinary, the get-outs too contrived and there's too much obsession with male members.  Updated 14 October 2003

 The Book of Ultimate Truths
Hugo Rune is the ultimate mystic. He has penned many great works, including The Book of Ultimate Truths. Now seventeen-year-old Cornelius Murphy, and his best friend, the tiny Tuppe, set out on an epic quest to recover the missing chapters of the book. Oh, and save the world. Murphy and Tuppe are not Rankin's greatest creations, but they rattle through the adventure with the usual panache and silliness.

A Dog Called Demolition.
An excellent bit of Rankin. For quite a while chapters start with whimsical poems, well worth reading (as you'll find when they stop). There's all the usual Rankin farce and painful punning, but underneath this is quite a horrific story of invisible parasites which ride on the shoulders of every human. An evil variant makes the hero, Danny Orion, a mass murderer before transferring to a hand-made dog. There's only Danny, his magical friend Mickey Merlin and a half-man, half-cockroach to save the world.     New 13 January 1999

 The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag
The story of Billy, whose Grandmother left him the "voodoo handbag" in her will, after he had sold her soul to science. The tales it told Billy would change his life for ever - and the lives of other people too. Again one we've not read yet, but sounds a good one.  New 11 September 2003

 The Fandom of the Operator
One of Rankin's more subtle title puns leads us in to the life of young anti-hero Gary Cheese grows up in a warped 1950s Brentford with two main interests: death, and the Lazlo Woodbine private-eye novels by PP Penrose. When this revered author dies, it's only logical that Gary and his best friend Dave should plan to crash the wake and reanimate him with voodoo This is an atypical Rankin book, although some of the old familiar Rankinisms surface (it's a tradition or an old charter or something). It's much more tightly plotted, more like a conventional novel, and very, very black comedy. Excellent stuff, though. New 11 September 2003

 The Garden of Unearthly Delights
Here we go again as the world moves from the scientific basis we know and love to a position where magic and mystery are reality. It's an interesting one, this - not in the usual Rankin mould of strange happenings in a very down-to-earth surrounding, instead his hero ventures off into a brave new world in which fantasy characters (which he may have created himself) become real. There's something very Alice in Wonderland about the way the principle character gradually engages with different characters in bizarre situations.   updated 7 October 2003

The Greatest Show off Earth
Raymond's had a rough couple of days. Snatched from his allotment by a flying starfish from Uranus and sold as a delicacy in a Venusian food market, it seems that his luck has changed when he is rescued by a travelling circus. But it's no ordinary circus - Professor Merlin's circus travels the solar system in a Victorian steamship doing impossible things, and Merlin wants Raymond to release two hundred people from Saturn and save Earh from extinction, all by Friday. Meanwhile, back on Earth, Raymond's friend Simon has trouble with Satanic chicken worshippers. Some of Rankin's best moments though occasionally goes over the top (ahem).

 The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse
Rankin is never one to let a good twisted phrase go - 'Armageddon, the Musical' had another incarnation before the book, and the Hollow Chocolate Bunnies feature in one or more of the Brentford books as a heavy rock band - but here they are the calling cards of a serial killer, working his way through fairy tale characters. An inversion of the Rankin norm - usually it's a case of weird characters and happenings being contrasted alongside very everyday people and places. Here the setting is downright weird, but often there's something very familiar about the way the characters react. Great as ever.  New 11 September 2003

 The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse   New 11 September 2003

The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived
Norman is dead. His dad fell out of the sky and flattened him. Now he finds himself reluctantly employed at the Universal Reincarnation Company, shuffling papers with the best of them. The trouble is, God decided to close down Hell, Heaven is overcrowded and the extension isn't finished. Until then , the URC just has to recycle those souls. But now there's something wrong. Someone is preincarnating, being reborn again and again. Nasty goings on in one of Rankin's better books, handling these most extreme circumstances with his usual ease.

 Nostradamus Ate my Hamster
Probably one of the best Rankin's for the beginner as the story is relatively linear. Admittedly there is some confusing stuff at the start about our old friends from Brentford, but most of the rest of the tale comes together with unusually satisfying solidity. Even so, there's plenty of Rankin's wonderfully bizarre imaginings in a plot that involves Adolf Hitler travelling to the present day, flying saucers, a beautiful barmaid, films involving dead characters and an evil creature that offer you long life in exchange for your spine. Probably some of the most outright horror moments in any Rankin. Excellent.  Updated 29 December 2003

Raiders of the Lost Car Park
The sequel to The Book of Ultimate Truths, this is another title feature one of Rankin's most frequently referred to characters, Hugo Rune. In early books Rune appears to be an out-and-out fraud of a guru-come-Aleistair Crowley figure - by now he is still more than a little dubious, but has genuine mystic powers. But the hero of the book is his son Cornelius Murphy, aided by the diminutive Tuppe (short for Tupperware - don't ask). They take on the fairies who live in the hidden places on the map and rule the world, with bizarre results. A middling Rankin - good stuff, well worth having, but not his best. Updated 9 November 2003

Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls
Rankin does it again. One of the most amazing things about this writer is his ability to keep turning out the same sort of books, but still make them fresh. Only Terry Pratchett seems able to beat him at this game. After all what else should you expect but extra-terrestrials when you take on the management of a band called Ghandi's Hairdryer?

 Snuff Fiction
The biographer of Brentford entrepreneur Doveston relives his memories from the 50s and 60s to the current decade - but don't expect it to be all sunny memories - this is Rankin, after all. In fact this is one of Rankin's darkest and most conventional novels with a dystopian future and some unpleasant steps along the way. Brings in plenty of old Brentford favourites in bit parts, but very different from the Brentford trilogy. Watch out for Norman in the nearest he gets to a starring role.  Updated 19 October 2003

 Sprout Mask Replica
Probably Rankin's worst, a rambling story of a man whose every movement has the potential, chaos theory like, to change the world. Not only is it incoherent, it misuses the Brentford Triangle characters, the only ones Rankin makes anything other than two dimensional, by giving them totally characterless bit parts, like faded film stars appearing in a bad modern blockbuster. Some excellent aspects - the poems to distract the narrator etc - but just doesn't make it.  Updated 25 October 2003

 Waiting for Godalming
It's another outing for Barry the time sprout, this time helping out famous detective Lazlo Woodbine, who first appeared as a fictional reference in the Brentford series. Watch out for other Rankin obsessions - God's offspring and Sherlock Holmes among them - in characteristic mayhem.  New 11 September 2003

 Website Story
Yes, our Robert can never resist a punning title! We're out there in Brentford, but for once everything in the garden is rosy, thanks to that wonderman (or is a fraud) Hugo Rune. But there's something lurking in the e-woodwork - a computer virus that kills people. When the reviewer ran a PC support group in the early days of computer viruses we genuinely had someone ring up worried about catching one - Rankin makes it seem all too plausible.   New 11 September 2003

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