Watching
Linda Regan in an old episode of Minder, reminded me I needed to jump back down
the rabbit hole that is her later career as a crime writer. Whereas Regan's
acting career generally played out in light comedy -she's probably best
remembered in that capacity for the sitcom Hi-De-Hi- her writing career walks a
different path, one that veers towards heavy duty exploitation. Full of bad
language, degrading sex and brutal violence, Guts for Garters is about as
removed from Hi-De-Hi as you can get, unless I've missed an episode of Hi-De-Hi
that opens with Ted Bovis torturing someone with a machete for selling crack at
Maplins.
Guts for Garters sees Regan tackle the subject of
girl gangs, although she wasn't the first female author to walk that beat. Back
in the heyday of New English Library, Maisie Mosco wrote Gang Girls (1978) but
as that book is now rare and commands high prices, Regan here is on hand to
provide a more modern and less prohibitively expensive alternative.
Guts for Garters centers around female hard cases
'The Alley Cats' who've decided to take the law into their own hands, after
rival gang the SLR (South London Rulers) try to seize control over the Aviary
estate. Queen of the Alley Cats, Alysha Achter, ain't standing for that on her
patch, and immediately proves herself to be a force to be reckoned with by
torturing SLR member Burak Kaya for selling drugs in the community. When Burak
is later found murdered, the SLR vow revenge on the Alley Cats, who in turn try
to place blame for the killing on in fighting within the SLR. Another killing
on the estate -a girl is beaten over the head with a hammer, falls in unfortunately
close proximity to some dog shit, then is set on fire- further exacerbates the
gang fighting, as well as opening up the possibility that a serial killer is
loose on the estate.
Guts for Garters was meant to be the first Regan
book to elevate Georgia Johnson to main character status, having previously
appeared as a supporting character in Regan's earlier books Brotherhood of
Blades (2011) and Street Girls (2012). A black Detective Inspector, Johnson's
career in the police force is motivated by her having been raped as a teenager,
giving her an affinity with The Alley Cats, whose members have similarly been
dealt a bad hand in life. It has to be said though that Johnson doesn't leave
much of an impression here, and gets overshadowed by both the antics of the
Girl Gang and her sex mad colleague DI Stephanie Green who proudly boasts to
having slept with most of the men on the force. Stephanie was so named by her
parents in tribute to their cockney background, Stephanie Green being a play on
Stepney Green. As an adult, her name has taken on a saucy double meaning, since
like Stepney Green Tube Station, Stephanie Green is easily accessible to most
Londoners (Regan's joke, not mine). I suspect Regan was trying to subvert
gender roles by giving Stephanie the type of characteristics that you'd more
associate with the alpha male cops of yesteryear. That is to say, that when
Stephanie isn't bedding members of the opposite sex, she's drinking heavily and
stuffing her face with junk food.
Guts for Garters is also part of an expanded
universe, the Reganverse if you will, and works in two characters from her DCI
Banham book series. Namely the aforementioned DCI Paul Banham and his
colleague/lover DI Alison Grainger. I must admit that my heart sank when those
two were introduced, since they are the dullest elements of their own books,
and don't exactly add much here. Banham's most notable characteristic is his
habit of vomiting at violent crime scenes, the result of his wife and child
being killed by a mad axeman 14 years earlier. It appears that his PTSD issues
are catching, since in this book Alison Grainger starts fainting at crime
scenes, due to having seen a work colleague being burnt to death. Alison also
has trouble unscrewing the tops off bottled water, and manages to trap her hand
in her own car door at one point, apart from that she is perfectly competent at
her job. What with Banham vomiting all over the place, Alison fainting and
Stephanie more concerned with her horizontal pleasures, its no wonder the
residents of the Aviary estate have no faith in the police force. Even Georgia
comes across as a bit of a mug, paying out cash to Alysha for information that
generally turns out to be useless and of course always exonerates The Alley
Cats from any wrongdoing.
Guts for Garters has the mentality of a Kray Twins
apologist. In the same way that certain people jump to the defense of Ronnie
and Reggie, and eulogize them as good lads who loved their mum, did allot for
their own community and never hurt their own, Guts for Garters fully subscribes
to idea of the noble criminal with a social conscience. Good girls at heart,
The Alley Cats care about the old folk on the estate, want to keep kids away
from drugs, only sell firearms and machetes outside of South London and have
their hearts set on rebuilding the children's playground. This book does have
an unfortunate tendency to reiterate the same plot points, if I had a pound for
every time I had to read about the Alley Cats' plans for the playground, I'd
have enough money to pay to fix the sodding playground myself.
The
contractions of The Alley Cats is something to behold. The Alley Cats sell
drugs, but only to people who already use drugs, and always encourage them to
stop using drugs. Alysha's goal is to open a community centre, a hair and nail
salon, and lest we forget rebuild the children's playground. All of which she
hopes will keep the kids away from drugs and prostitution, even though she
plans to fund these schemes from the proceeds of drugs and prostitution.
"I love that we're together an 'ave got plans to make the estate a good
place an 'elp the kids to 'ave a chance wiv life" claims one of the Alley
Cats, yet when it comes to society's ills, they seem to be spreading the
disease in order to come up with the cure. Despite that, The Alley Cats believe
that one day people will build statues honouring them, and they'll be as
revered as Winston Churchill.
In contrast their male equivalent, the SLR are
utterly without conscious, want to get all the kids hooked on crack, mug old
ladies and demean their girlfriends by punching them in the face and making
them pull a train. They can't be faulted when it comes to inclusivity though.
While the hierarchy, like SLR leader Harisha Celik are all young Turks, the
rest of the gang includes Pakistanis, mixed race kids, whitey and even the
Chinese. Harisha believing that the Chinese are naturally superior to everyone
else when it comes to growing cannabis and wielding samurai swords, even though
those are actually Japanese weapons. Regan largely avoids race hate elements,
although we do get some rather random anti-Chinese racism towards the end. One
of the Alley Cats contemplates whether or not to "beat the shit out" of
a Chinese rival, and the gang vow to start setting fire to Chinese restaurants
in the East End if the Chinese vandalize the Alley Cats' community centre. This
presumably is setting up another Johnson and the Alley Cats novel... hopefully
the Chinese won’t attack the Children's playground with their Japanese swords.
Make no mistake this is a proper exploitation
novel, regardless of its typically uninspired 2010s book cover and the
relatively mainstream acting career of its author. Had Regan been a regular in
British gangster movies or Pete Walker films -the hammer murder here brings to
mind Walker's Schizo- then Guts for Garters would make sense. As it is there is
nothing in Regan's career to suggest it was building up to books like this.
She's isn't totally unique in this respect. Candy Davis -who also pops up in an
early Minder episode - was another actress who reinvented herself as a crime
novelist. Maybe there is a case for having appeared in Minder warping the minds
of these bubbly blonde comedy actresses, which manifested itself years later by
them writing crime books for those with strong stomachs. Regan certainly doesn't
shy away from violence against women here. There are graphically described
rapes and a gangbang, as well as a rebellious Muslim girl being burnt with an
iron for being seen in public without her Hijab. At the same time Regan doesn't
let men off the hook, with males depicted as an abusive or creepy bunch within
these pages. Even DCI Banham, who is usually sympathetically portrayed in his
own books (he did after all lose his wife and child to an axe murderer) gets
pulled up a few times for his chauvinism. At one point, Banham makes derogatory
comments about women drivers, annoying Stephanie, not of course to the extent
that it puts her off wanting to have sex with him 'she watched him aiming his
key at his car door and wondered what he would say if she offered him a
blowjob'.
As much as Guts for Garters is in many ways the
heir apparent to the nasty NEL youthspoitation paperbacks of the 1970s, Regan
does self consciously try to make it a product of the 2010s. There is an influx
of pop culture references that probably made this book seem hip and topical for
a few months in 2015, but aren't aging well. One character is compared to Amy
Winehouse, DI Johnson guesses the password on a deceased girl's laptop by
typing in the names of One Direction band members and Alysha wonders 'what it
was like to be famous, be someone like Rihanna, and have everything you wanted
in life'. Winehouse's early death might mean that she still resonates in the
public conscious, but many of the other pop culture references here now just
provoke a response of 'who' or 'I haven't thought about them in years'. Such is
the fickle nature of fame.
I can't fault Regan's choice of name for her head
gang girl though. Since I did actually go to school with someone called Alysha,
who years later resurfaced in the papers having been sent to prison for running
a drugs den, and was last heard of opening a hair and nails salon. So, for an
ex school chum of mine at least it seems that life really does imitate Linda
Regan novel.
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