Charles Prentice goes to Spain to try and assist his brother who has been charged with the murder of five people.
To make thing even more interesting , although the brother has plead guilty, no one believes that he has committed these crimes.
So what we do is suspend belief and enter the world of J.G ( James Graham) Ballard. The Guardian newspaper has referred to him as having " A unique and profoundly original mind". This is rather a massive understatement.
After our belief suspension is firmly in place, we enter the life of a gated community catering to the early retirees from England and other European countries who have opted for the sun and sand of the Spanish coast.
Along the way we meet the doctor whose main duties consist of retrieving drug overdoses from the edge. The tennis pro who appears to run the place and several others who appear to be equally amoral.
The characters in this novel are truly creepy, as is the premise of the entire book. Dystopian is the word , but everyone seems to use it and as I have only known what it means for a couple of years I will resist.
What starts out as a 'who dunnit' soon turns into a ' why dunnit'.
Cocaine Nights is a fable about what can happen with unlimited leisure. The moral I got from this was ' work hard and respect your mother or really bad stuff will happen.'
A great read once you succumb to "Ballard's world".
Unfortunately Mr. Ballard is no longer with us having passed away in April 2009,we did indeed loose a ' profoundly original mind'
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