HIGH SOCIETY

A member of Parliament takes on the bugaboo of drug decriminalization.

Well-known British comic author Elton has already taken on reality TV (Dead Famous, Feb. 2003), Tarantino-esque filmmakers (Popcorn, 1997), and the perils of pregnancy (Inconceivable, 2000). Now, he takes up the drug trade and attendant criminality, in pretty much all their aspects. His method is to weave together a number of different plotlines dependent upon a light web of coincidence and interrelations (something like the film Traffic), the most central of these involving a heretofore-overlooked Parliament member, Peter Paget, who proposes a sweeping decriminalization bill that’s met at first with expected jeers and consternation but gradually gathers some real steam. If only Paget—the picture of two-kids-and-a-wife decency—wasn’t shagging his comely assistant. Elsewhere, there’s the crusading anticorruption police inspector, the Scottish girl sucked into addiction and prostitution on the streets of London, a drug mule in Bangkok, and, providing most of the needed comic relief, a running monologue given at various recovery meetings by a hugely successful Robbie Williams–esque pop star about his crimes and misadventures as he ingests truly heroic amounts of cocaine and alcohol. Paget provides Elton’s thesis: the illegality of drugs mixed with the near-universal taking of drugs makes the entire county criminal: “We are all either criminals ourselves or associates of criminals or relatives of criminals.” The first third or so here is rather inspired, mixing Elton’s quick-witted banter with a high-minded yet concretely realistic assault on drug hysteria. Elton, however, like his pop star who whines about this fact, will not be breaking the US market with his effort. No matter how cheeky the whole, the last half of the book, in which Paget et al. collapse in a welter of bad decision-making and the ravages of addiction, is not as successful in its pathos as the earlier pages were in their humor.

A mixture of comedy with tragedy that fails to produce real black comedy: another decent but desperately uneven effort from Elton.