We rejoin our not-so-friendly neighbourhood sociopath Dyson Devereux in a London pub, where he is celebrating the end of his university exams with fellow undergraduates. He is miles away in his head, however:

“I left Tollington nearly eight years ago and have only been back twice. Aunt didn’t want me there after I pushed her daughter, Beatrice, off a cliff. It was considered to be an accident, but Aunt was suspicious. In my mind’s eye, I see Beatrice plummeting into the mist. This is my favorite memory.
“Ha, haha.”

Dyson needs to get a job, but before that rather tedious necessity, there are three more names on his to-kill list, and they are all in the Dorset town of Tollington. Top Trumps is the lecherous Dr Trenton who, years earlier had seduced Mrs Devereaux (while her husband was dying of AIDS) and filled her so full of tranquilisers that she lapsed into a fatal coma. Two elderly twins – Virulent Veronica and Conniving Clementine – who run a tea-shop must also die because of their persistent taunting of the younger Dyson, publicly stigmatising him for his father’s alleged sins. After eventually passing his driving test, Dyson tours local used car yards for his first set of wheels. He has one main criterion. The car’s boot must be wide enough to accommodate the Samurai sword – honed to razor sharpness – which hangs on he bedroom wall of his student digs.

Dyson is devastated to learn that one of the malignant twins has thwarted his vengeance by dying of old age. Undaunted, he executes her sister and returns to London where, after befriending the daughter of an Indian billionaire. he is invited to an the launch party of an art exhibition by a young man called Sebastian

‘A grim-faced waiter, wearing a bright green tail coat, materializes next to me.He is holding out a plate.
“Tuna balls with cream cheese and red onion.”
I help myself to one. It tastes piquant. The exhibition’s art is being put to shame by the seafood Hors d’Oevre. Sebastian is devoid of artistic talent. However, he has one thing going for him. His German mother is an heiress to a pharmaceutical fortune.’

After a few false starts, Dyson finally puts the Samurai sword to use in the manner for which it was designed, and his trilogy of vengeance seems to be over. Despite some interest from the police, he has covered his tracks so carefully that the two most recent crimes cannot be pinned on him, and he begins his working career in the less-than-exotic offices of a London borough council in their Green Spaces Department. This segues fairly neatly into the first book – in publishing chronology – of the series, Necropolis, which I reviewed in 2014 (click here to read)

Satire in Britain is, in my view, in a fairly bad way at the moment. Like comedy, it seems to have just been absorbed into the prevailing metropolitan liberal mindset, which only considers the political right as a legitimate target. Private Eye is a shadow of its former self, and I gave up on HIGNFY years ago. Rare is the journalist who challenges the prevailing Islingtonian doctrines through comedy, Rod Liddle being perhaps one exception. I can’t think of anyone who writes quite like Guy Portman. Jonathan Meades is similarly trenchant and iconoclastic, but even his last novel had to be crowd-funded, as no publisher would touch it. If your dragons are in the shape of cultural and political correctness, slavish worship of diversity, and hand-wringing liberal views, Portman is your St George. Avengement is available now.