Savage Life

Fiction inspired by the Thatcher era continues to filter out of England, taking the form, in this instance, of sophomoric satire. The cast of disagreeable characters is easily distributed among the new class divisions that 1980s money erected. At the bottom, there is Gaz Hoskins, an incompetent teenage housebreaker, whose dreams hardly go beyond a new pair of overpriced designer sneakers. At the top, the Machiavellian Dorian Savage rules over his life insurance empire with an insatiable need to strike a deal. Stuck in the middle is Colin Nutter, an overwhelmed aging yuppie trying to keep a foothold on his treadmill sales job at Savage Life while worrying about his wife, children and mortgage. The tightly chaotic plot is set in motion when Gaz breaks into Nutter's home while Nutter and Savage are yachting. Gaz's discovery of a photo of Savage leads him to the revelation that the millionaire is his long-lost father. Before the book's end, Gaz will have comically disrupted every corner of Savage's self-satisfied world, and Nutter will have lost his job and unwittingly put out a contract on his former boss. While these unlikely relationships make for an obvious satire of class distinctions, Rogers keeps the pace fast and loose as he takes pot shots at such sitting targets of contemporary British life as rap music, junk food, theme pubs and wank mags. It may have read funnier in England than it does here. Though this is Rogers's third novel, it's the first to be issued in the U. S. (Sept.)