Colin Butts

Currently laid up with a cast on my leg, IS HARRY STILL ON THE BOAT? was sent to me by a friend who found it at a local pound store (the British equivalent of a dollar store) to cheer me up. Hard to pass up a book where the author's last name is Butts and the price is only a buck!


IS HARRY STILL ON THE BOAT? is about a travel holiday agency on the brink of bankruptcy, the brash rebel account manager who saves the day and who also, perhaps, finds true love in the end. The title, which is Cockney rhyming slang for ejaculating on someone's face, is actually a sequel to [b:Is Harry On The Boat|1357852|Is Harry On The Boat?|Colin Butts|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182966162s/1357852.jpg|1347583]?, which later became a film for ITV and then a serialized drama. Both books have purportedly been reviewed as being incredibly accurate about the holiday travel business and clubbing/electronic music scene in Ibiza.

On one hand, the technicality of the writing wasn't bad - in fact, the technicality of the structure was quite good! I read to find out about what I do not know and I know that from reading interviews with Butts, he knows, and is passionate, this particular territory well - clubbing, holiday reps, and the Ibiza scenes are all facets from Butts' own life. But this is where the book fails - Butts' could not give me anyone to root for or against. The characters, young, wild, and gorgeous should be leaping off the pages but instead they need a hoist to get them onto the next paragraph. They are pensioners disguised as young playthings and it bored me.

It's funny to think a book on drugs, clubbing, sexing, and wild times would be boring - but it was. I gave up after 75 pages, skipped to the end and found that what I knew was going to happen in the beginning, happened in the end. Talk about cliches.

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