It’s not given to many musicians to change the course of popular music, but Kraftwerk certainly did. While not inventing electronic music (Delia Derbyshire and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop did that) they were the first to consider it as a new form of popular music. Sadly, founding member Florian Schneider died late last month.

I first heard of Kraftwerk in that famous Tomorrow’s World piece. At the time I thought their sound was a little soulless and wouldn’t catch on. It did.

Kraftwerk: Tour de France

Florian Schneider (Florian Schneider-Esleben:) 7/4/1947 – 21/3/2020. So it goes.

A Parody, Boxtree, 2012, 247 p

I saw this in one of my local libraries and couldn’t resist. The words, “Is it a murder mystery? Is it biting social satire? Who knows? Who cares? You’re not my mother – where am I?” adorn the front cover and the Praise on the back reads, ‘Quite simply one of the world’s leading prose stylists – and a wonderful wife’ – Derek O’Furniture; ‘Writing Crooked House was pure pleasure and I feel justified in my belief that it is one of my best’ – Agatha Christie; ‘With Trans-Europe Express Kraftwerk single-handedly popularised the electric music genre’ – NME; ‘Johnny is progressing very well with the oboe, but might take a little more care with his fingering’ – Miss Pripps, Music Teacher.

With blurb like that you know you’re not in for a serious read and so it turns out. Terry Fairbreath has disappeared from the small town of Mumford – a village dominated by the fact that a famous author of fantasy books lives there. Despite the locals never mentioning the author’s name – indeed they take great pains not to – this has brought tourists to the town, which is now festooned with Olde Shoppes – including Ye Olde Cure-iosity Shoppe (Chemist) and the Olde DVD Shoppe. (How soon such things date.)

Despite the resonances invoked by this there is only one supernatural element in the book; the appearance of an ogre which at one point chases our two main characters Reginald Bradley, recently promoted to Detective Inspector, and journalist Sam Easton, who is researching police work for a proposed novel. Bradley has doubts about his suitability to fill his new role, Easton provides advice dredged from his memories of crime novels and TV series. In the end the whole thing ends up as more of a parody of detective fiction than of fantasy.

The reference to the town seeing off a plan to dump tens of thousands of remaindered crappy parodies written by “talentless half-brained hacks” trying “to make a quick buck off the back of genuinely successful authors by writing things with similar titles and book covers” is perhaps a step too far. I did like though, “an ancient stone wall constructed of paving slabs,” which had this not been a parody would have been a contender for Pedant’s Corner.

Pedant’s corner: snuck, the first fifteen of the Mumford rugby league team (only thirteen to a side in rugby league I’m afraid,) linem of business (line,) two film noirs (films noir,) from whence, Styrofoam cups is USian – as is fire department – slew (slewed,) and a paragraph indent occurring in the middle of a sentence.