Mr Love And Justice - Colin MacInnes

MR LOVE AND JUSTICE – COLIN MACINNES

The third of Colin MacInnes' three great London Novels and again as with City Of Spades I'm struck by the thought as to why it's always Absolute Beginners that is touted as being the best of them and why it was made into a film (albeit a very bad one) and not the others?

Mr Love And Justice centres upon two characters, a seaman turned pimp called Frankie Love and Police Constable Edward Justice, newly promoted to Detective Constable in the Vice Squad. Being both in the same line of business as it were, their paths inevitably cross.

As with Absolute Beginners, the plot is neither here nor there and of little consequence, and as also with his previous books it's a bit long-winded and nothing really happens until half way into it. The difference between Mr Love And Justice and MacInnes' two previous books, however, is that whereas Absolute Beginners accent was on the emerging new youth cultures of that time, and City Of Spades dealt with the new immigrant culture in London, Mr Love And Justice is solely about prostitution.

From the start, it's very apparent that MacInnes has done his research into the subject and has obviously spoken to and interviewed prostitutes, pimps and police officers alike. It's all in the detail. Noticeably, there is also a more liberal use of the word 'fuck' than there was in the first two books, both in the narrative and in the dialogue.

The book's strength lies in the way MacInnes has managed to enter the relatively secret and twilight worlds of both prostitution (particularly the pimping or 'poncing' aspect of it) and the police and how he reports back on what he has observed. Essentially, he offers an insight into what drives these two worlds both morally and ethically. From these insights he then slips into the text a fair few of his own thoughts and deductions regarding the police and the law they uphold.

For example, at one point he writes 'For the true copper's dominant characteristic, if the truth be known, is neither those daring nor vicious qualities that are sometimes attributed to him by friend or enemy, but an ingrained conservatism, an almost desperate love of the conventional. It is untidiness, disorder, the unusual, that a copper disapproves of most of all: far more, even, than of crime, which is merely a professional matter.' And isn't that the truth?

'I think we can do without them,' says Frankie Love, referring to the police 'They're the only profession, the coppers, who've never had a hero – ever thought of that? They've put up statues to Nell Gwynne and Lady Godiva, but never so far as I know to a copper.'

And then in a discussion between Frankie Love and Edward Justice there's this: 'If you hear a scream in the night these days you say, “Oh, the law will take care of it”. A hundred years ago or even fifty, our grandfathers would have grabbed hold of the poker and gone out and taken a look themselves. They'd have done something: not just dialled 999.'

'I guess that's the age we live in,' Edward said.

'Yes, but I don't like it. Because you cops – well, you'll switch to any boss: any boss whatever. Whoever's got a grip then you'll obey him however good or bad his acts and his ideas may be.'

And again, isn't that the truth?

At another point in the book, MacInnes describes the audience at a wrestling match: 'Surrounding them was a cross-section of that part of the London populace which is rarely to be seen elsewhere (except at race meetings, certain East and South London pubs, and courts and jails), and whose chief characteristics are their uninhibited violence, their heartless bonhomie, and their total rejection alike of the left-ish Welfare State and the right-ish Property-owning democracy: a sort of Jacobean underground movement in the age of planned respectability from grave to cradle.' This being a very good description of a working class strata that is probably more common than MacInnes suggests, though hardly ever spoken of or written about.

All these things are almost obviously and exclusively the thoughts of MacInnes himself put into the mouths of his characters or slipped into various paragraphs along the way that interestingly reveal an almost anarchist bent to MacInnes. Having now read all three of his London books, though it might grate with some of his fans of his work, I would say that MacInnes himself is actually more interesting as a person and as a writer than the books themselves, and that perhaps it's not the books that should be highlighted, celebrated and held in such high esteem but the actual man himself?

John Serpico