People Matter: Keeping Bad Company

Keeping Bad Company by Ann Granger

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Pp. 311

This Fran Varady Crime Novel is the second in the series. The reader is clearly expected to have some knowledge of the character, but the novel stands up even without it. Fran is an out-of-work actor living in squats and having run-ins with police. “I knew enough to keep clear of trouble. I can’t help it if trouble sometimes seeks me out.” She has an Indian friend, Ganesh, a decent set of morals, firm opinions, a sardonic outlook on life, and occasional flashes of humour. As the novel is narrated from the first-person perspective, the reader is naturally drawn to her.

While waiting at a station she buys a cup of coffee for a homeless man, Albie, who tells her he witnessed a kidnapping. She believes him, although no one else seems to, and when she decides to look more closely into the matter, Albie winds up dead. Fran senses she may be in danger herself as she meets kidnappers, ransom hunters, distressed parents, and uninterested police officers. She quickly learns that no one trusts anyone else. She particularly doesn’t trust men, and their violence and intimidation are treated almost casually. 

She baldly asserts, “If you’re a young woman and live alone, as I did, the risk of a stalker hanging around the place is always there. They see you around the area, follow you home. Sometimes it gets no further than that. They get bored and seek out other prey. Or they get frightened off.” It is a depressing fact that she needs to know this information. “Noise is a weapon. If you can’t do anything else, yell. It disorientates, frightens, and above all, attracts outside attention.” We were all taught this as young women.

Her politics are socialist-leaning, and she despises those who can see no further than their comfortable lives. “It’s a fact that no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse. Beggars can’t be choosers they say, and I bet ‘they’ are comfortably housed.” Being an artistic and creative type, her motivations are less consumerist. They assume we all want the things our consumer society reckons essential to health and happiness. But what about the ability to find hope and happiness in little things?”

Her world is one of corner shops, basement flats, disused warehouses and greasy-spoon cafes. She refers to one of the pubs she frequents as “resolutely downmarket. That’s what its patrons like about it. Everywhere else around has been gentrified, yuppified or poncified. The term depends on whether you’re an estate agent or one of the Rose’s regulars.” Her language is generally straightforward with the occasional glimpse of imaginative prose.

This is an immediate environment and a likeable central character, who gets caught up in criminal acts through no fault of her own. There are seven books in the series of the Everywoman – I shall seek out more.