Product Description

God's other son, Colin, who was edited out of the Bible when Jesus got artistic control, is a bit pissed off. Well wouldn't you be, with your brother stealing the lime-light like that? But now God's been murdered, and there's no way Colin's gonna let the meek inherit the Earth. He's in charge now.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #219498 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Robert Rankin's wondrously oddball fantasies have caused addicted readers' heads to spontaneously explode on five separate continents, most of them in Brentford. Some call him the Terry Pratchett of seedy suburbia, but only if they want a punch in the chops...

Waiting for Godalming reports the greatest case of private eye Lazlo Woodbine, hired to investigate God's murder and the suspicious fact that Earth was inherited not by the meek but by God's other son Colin--edited out of the Bible when Jesus got full artistic control. Woodbine is strong on gunplay, dark alleys, rooftop confrontations and talking bizarre drivel in bars, but one worries about the Holy Guardian Sprout called Barry living inside his head.

Meanwhile, light-fingered Icarus Smith discovers the "Red Head" reality pills that reveal the disguised demons among us for the awful, scaly, insect-mouthed horrors that they are. Meanwhile, Prof. Bruce Partington's "spectremeter" device raises ghosts but can't make them go away again. Meanwhile, conspiracy theorists will shiver to the dread Ministry of Serendipity hidden under Mornington Crescent station, and its awful uses for barbers' chairs.

As Rankin's anarchic storylines go, this is unusually sober and logical. There's a flood of running gags, self-referential japes, author interjections, allusions to a million Sherlock Holmes titles, and deranged one-liners like this architectural description of Wisteria Lodge:

To the original Georgian pile had been added a Victorian bubo, an Edwardian boil and a nineteen-thirties cyst.

Full of inspired silliness throughout, this is Rankin in good form. --David Langford

From the Back Cover
IF IT'S GOD'S WILL, THEN WHO GETS THE MONEY?

God is dead. He died in mysterious circumstances while on a fishing trip to Norfolk, leaving a wife, three children and a great deal of valuable property.

According to God's last will and testament, he left his beloved planet Earth to his youngest son, Colin. Which seems mightily suspicious as the meek were expecting to inherit it. Colin is all for flogging it off to the highest bidder, a chum of his called Lou Cipher. God's wife is all for calling in a private eye, to expose the truth about her husband's sudden death. And if you're going to call in a private eye, then there's only one man you can call. And that's Lazlo Woodbine.

This could well be the great detective's biggest challenge ever. And with Laz on the case you know you can expect a lot of gratuitous sex and violence, a trail of corpses leading down an alleyway, a good deal of toot being talked in bars and a really spectacular rooftop ending...

About the Author
Robert Rankin
Robert Rankin is the author of Web Site Story, Waiting for Godalming, Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls, Snuff Fiction, Apocalypso, The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag, Sprout Mask Replica, Nostradamus Ate My Hamster, A Dog Called Demolition, The Garden of Unearthly Delights, The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived, The Greatest Show Off Earth, Raiders of the Lost Car Park, The Book of Ultimate Truths, the Armageddon quartet (three books), and the Brentford trilogy (five books) which are all published by Corgi Books. Robert Rankin's latest novel, The Fandom of the Operator, is now available as a Doubleday hardback.

Customer Reviews

Interestingly odd
My first Robert Rankin, and i have bought more. Can there be a better review than that?

Delciously twisted. Following multiple characters, each from multiple perspectives seems to be a lot to keep track of, but its only when you finish the book that you realise its what you have done.

Its a kind of bizzare whodunnit, but not one where you spend the whole book trying to guess who it was yourself. Amazingly you didnt even know the truth till the end!

Woodbine's last case?
`Waiting For Godalming' is Robert Rankin's 21st novel, and also one of his best. The story stars self-styled last of the hardboiled gumshoe detectives Lazlo Woodbine (some call him Laz), a character first introduced in `Armageddon 3: The Suburban Book of the Dead', and who also took the lead role in `The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag'. If you're not already familiar with the character suffice to say that for reasons too obscure to go into (but possibly tied into the fact that he is utterly insane) Lazlo only works in first person detective genre cliché, only ever uses 4 sets (his office, a bar, an alleyway, and a rooftop for the climax) and comes complete with trench-coat, fedora, a beautiful dame who always knocks him out, and a talking sprout called Barry who lives in his head (I told you he was mad). `Waiting For Godalming' sees Lazlo take on his greatest case as, following up some of the blasphemous backstory of the Armageddon books, he is hired by God's wife to find out who murdered her husband. Due to his limit of four sets building an entire novel around Lazlo can be tricky, so Rankin sensibly gives half the narrative to his thieving brother Icarus, who ends up embroiled in a mad scheme to liberate a drug that can allow humans to see the angels and demons that walk amongst them.

`Waiting For Godalming' has all the insane ideas one would expect from Rankin, and is also stuffed with great comedy scenes, loads of quality old toot and running gags (some of which, like the cab drivers Knowlegde, is even new!). Sometimes Rankin's novels can fall apart at the finale when the author fails to provide a proper conclusion, but here everything is nicely resolved as Lazlo gets the traditional detectives wrapping up speech, and the theme of the two brothers relationship is nicely handled. Rankin heavily hints that this is Lazlo Woodbine's last case (and let's face it - how can you top solving who murdered God?), and if so this is a worthy finale. Great stuff - though as ever with Rankin you may well want to check out the earlier books first, or this may simply be too crazed for you to cope with

Silent nite *was* cleverer
If one pardons the obvious blasphemies, than Robert Rankin's "Waiting for Godalming" is, fundamentally, a good novel. It contains all the hallmarks of a classic Rankin thriller; it has the well-drawn characters, the blindingly fast plot situations, the groan-worthy running gags, and the complex switch-backs and double-crosses. No-one has equaled Rankin's use of surrealism, creativity, occult, SF, fantasy and the right jigger of humour to produce a decidedly fun novel. Rankin *is* the Father of Far-Fetched Fiction; comic fantasy seems to be too much of a restraining description of the Rankinist genre.
"Waiting for Godalming" is possibly the most logical Rankin novel produced. It is a Lazlo Woodbine novel so one can expect the talking of toot, the gratuitous violence, the drugs & the sex, the Phillip Marlowe double-speak, and the persistent interruptions made by the Time-Sprout Barry, a cabbage which appears to be taking residence inside of Lazlo's skull.
"Waiting For Godalming" is quite clearly a parody; of all the pulp noir that has ever been produced in the name of crime fiction. But it also features the 'death' of God (not ot give anything away), which might make even the most stalwart religious rebel slightly anxious.
"Waiting for Godalming" seems to owe as much to "The Matrix" as it does to Irvine Welsh's "Trainspotting."
This is Rankin, remember. As quick and inventive as the novel it is, you have been forewarned.