Charles Harris

COSY it isn’t. Hampstead author Charles Harris’s comedy crime novel Play Me! mixes humour with a slug of murder and mayhem.

It features hapless Camden-based rock singer AxMan Flyn, who is invited to star in a charity “peace” concert on a fictional, basket-case Caribbean island. On arrival, sachets of white powder in the rock star’s luggage prompt a customs inspector to comment: “Bringing drugs into our country? Are you an idiot? Everyone else is smuggling them out.”

Thrown into prison, AxMan is swept out again in a mass jailbreak that becomes a riotous looting-fest heading for the presidential palace. He witnesses the president’s assassination in a coup – and the new gangster-president frames him as the killer.

In fear for their lives, AxMan and his personal assistant Micky Slapstone scarper. Held captive by kidnappers, they team up with gangster Freddie and escape in a hail of bullets, helped by Freddie’s sister Dania.

Harris, who told Review he aims to be “both entertaining and thought-provoking”, presents a quickfire story of AxMan’s exploits among wrong-uns and rebels on the corrupt turnip-shaped island, which is in the grip of rapacious overseas business.

The singer’s fame (his real name is Bennie Goldstein, son of Golders Green dentists) springs from his long-ago teenage hit, Stick It To The Man (Wiv a gun in your han’). He fused “punk, heavy metal and anti-establish­ment rap into rebel metal, a genre nobody had thought of before”. On the island, called Benkuda, everyone from prisoners to guerilla fighters chants the song, an anthem against “The Man” – the powers that be.

AxMan is trying to fight off pirates when rebels arrive and take him to their camp. His support for the dissidents grows in a story bristling with twists and cliffhangers, sparky relationships, a seam of satire, a spurt of anger. It’s often funny, with a serious point – the exploitation of countries such as (fictional) Benkuda by companies from wealthy nations.

AxMan is surprised at the abundance of crops, given that there’s so much hunger on the island. A farm manager says none of the food will be eaten there. It can be processed and sold to the rich in Europe and America for much more, which the locals can’t afford.

The singer’s scary name and tough stage image belie a soft centre. “He’s desperate to do something to make the world a better place,” Harris says. The do-good impulse – fame-hungry AxMan pictures himself as the “Bono of rebel metal” – prompts his agreement to front the charity concert, which turns out to be a scam designed by Freddie to lure charities and cash to the island.

Ruthless arch manipulator Meredith Heel, henchwoman of grasping corporation Gropius-Plant Plc, says rebels have turned AxMan into an online recruiting sergeant. She wants him and his friends dead.

Meredith is the horrible face of capitalism, advising governments of small countries on projects to develop their economy by arranging massive loans – from Gropius-Plante.

The money comes into the country and promptly goes out to pay for projects built by the company. Her “proudest” scheme on the island is the first of four proposed nuclear power stations it doesn’t need, which don’t improve anyone’s living conditions.

Harris observes that people like fictional Meredith Heel do exist. “Their job is to lead countries like Benkuda into debt, whatever lies and false promises it takes, and make money out of them,” he says.

There’s a lighter look at capitalism in the person of engaging entrepreneur Jamie, whose business ventures change with the wind of chance, from Jamie’s Prison Advice Service to Jamie’s Cruises, Jamie’s Finance, Jamie’s Munitions – even Jamie’s Birthday Parties.

He says many islanders’ love of naming their children after their favourite brands – such as Lucky Strike, PanAm and Sprite – is “part of our passion for the capitalist system”.

AxMan and Micky face guns, machetes, brushes with death. When AxMan first holds a gun in his hand there are surprising, darkly humorous consequences.

Dania’s experience strikes a bleak note. Captured while fighting pirates, she later reports having endured sexual assault and exploitation.

In a dramatic scene riddled with gunshots, AxMan helps rescue enslaved islanders called “The Disappeareds” and urges them to fight The Man. At the story’s crescendo, the rock singer plays his biggest, most powerful gig.

Harris, who teaches the martial art Aikido (he is a 6th Dan black-belt), said one of his students, an SAS veteran, advised him about the kind of weapons used by characters in the book, and the picture on its cover.

Also a writer-director for film and TV, Harris filmed an award-winning BBC2 satirical documen­tary, Sex, Drugs and Dinner in the Dominican Republic, highlighting iniquities in world trade. Play Me! draws on his research there.

The book has won a place as a finalist for the 2025 Page Turner awards, the latest in a number of accolades for novels by Harris – who has been a Green Party candidate in Camden elections and is on the steering group for Hampstead Transport Partnership.

He said of the issues Play Me! raises: “I am angry. A lot of humour comes from anger. I hope people will enjoy the book but also see what’s going on.”

• Play Me! By Charles Harris. Blue Coast Publishing, £19.99