‘Why it’s like Sylvanian Families gone mad!’ – Grandville Mon Amour by Bryan Talbot

Oh Bryan Talbot, how I love thee, let me count the ways! Well, first, let’s put all of the exhilarating joy of reading tales of the belligerent badger Inspector LeBrock to one side. Bryan Talbot is one of those graphic novelists who are beloved of grown-ups like myself who are partial to the odd bit of sequential high jinx. Part of the reason Bryan Talbot is beloved is because he produces great art married with fantastic and fantastical narrative (which is easier said than done). Another part of why Bryan Talbot is beloved is because – as some reviews of the last LeBrock outing, Grandville, will attest – there are those who (a) don’t get graphic novels (b) don’t get why grown-ups would read graphic novels and (c) don’t get why grown-ups who read graphic novels would want to read about a steampunk-y alternate universe to our own in which human beings are regarded, at best, as skinny pink pets and animals rule the roost and, moreover, where Britain and France have been at war and are just coming to terms with a new and uneasy post-war entente. There is a sneaky and malicious part of me that loves the fact that there are people in the world (strange people with motor oil instead of blood) who can look at Grandville and its glorious sequel Grandville Mon Amour and shrug, perplexed, at what all the fuss is about. For the rest of us, those people with blood and not motor oil, a quick flick through the glossy pages – where you’ll see furious, scowling dogs and stern crows dressed up as prison guards and angry horses manning (or should that be horsing?) machine gun turrets and shy and pensive dormouse landladies and rodents dressed up like assisting detectives – why it’s like Sylvanian Families gone mad!

Inspector LeBrock (Talbot’s finest creation? It’s certainly up for debate) is another treat: Talbot undoubtedly doffs his cap to Conan Doyle but whereas Sherlock is an annoying know-it-all at times (admit it, anyone whose read the Conan Doyle stories longs for those stray, rare moments when Holmes struggles to put the pieces together), LeBrock sometimes gets it wrong, sometimes takes a wee while to get where he’s going, sometimes is as fallible as (could it be true?) you and I. Like Holmes he is given to fits of terrible despond (we meet him in the current outing in a living room that has been smashed to pieces, a gun having discharged a full barrel into the furniture and the hearth mirror, LeBrock’s natty sidekick Detective Ratzi moved to utter that most English of paroxysms ‘Oh deary deary me’ (the world of Grandville, you should know, is ever so ever so English, like Wallace & Gromit only more so). Within a matter of pages we see the best and worst of LeBrock, raising his voice and screaming in rage with is pointy teeth bared one moment and then hanging his head forlornly in the shower the next. Here, my friends, is all of life between the narrowest thumb and forefinger.

But what of the tale itself? Well, this time around, LeBrock and Ratzi are on the trail of Mad Dog, an actual dog who partook in some wartime terrorism with a side-order of prostitute murder and has escaped from high security nick to pop over the water to try his hand at slicing and dicing some Frenchified ladies of the night. It isn’t long, though, before LeBrock has fathomed there’s more to the murder spree than meets the eye at the same time as a certain young lady (also of the night) meets his eye and does a nice curtsey. Before you can say Alan Pakula style paranoid Governmental intrigue, LeBrock finds himself caught up in a conspiracy – a conspiracy that, of course, goes all the way to the top.

Talbot is so deft at weaving together his skein of plots, and small hints and tips litter the book pointing out how things will go (the background detail littered with joys and pleasures that anoint second and third readings of the book and indeed second and third readings of the first Grandville book too), that you hardly notice how efficiently you are taken from plot twist to revelation to plot twist to revelation. All I can tell you, if you’ve yet to sample the delights of Bryan Talbot, is that I read the book with a huge smile on my face and when I was done I sat back and interlaced my fingers about my capacious belly in the same way I would if I’d just eaten a tremendously satisfying meal. If you want the graphic novel equivalent of a hearty meal, then Grandville Mon Amour is the book for you!

Any Cop?: So much cop that I am in fact already hankering after the proposed third outing which is currently in the works! Bring it on, I say, bring it on!