Bill Savage: Idiot

[Grae the puppetmaker]

I am Bill Savage. London hardman & hero of the resistance.

Using my brother Tom's borrowed press card & a swiftly grown beard I shall infiltrate a dinner party held by visiting Volgon dictator Vashkov, Where I shall execute him for his crimes against Britain (but mostly against my family) with my trademark double barrelled shotgun! Dirty Volg Funk!

What's that you say? Advise my brother & his family to go into hiding to protect them from reprisals. Why would I do that? It's not like the Volgs will check the IDs of the dinner guests and work out who didn't leave thereby leading them to the assassin. You're 'avin a larf ain't yer?

...

There we are, job done. Oh, excuse me that's my mobile.
What? Tom dead!
25th Floor?
Accident?

Bugger.


Ladies & Gentlemen of the messageboard, the prosecution rests.

Grae.

[Max Kon]

or: pat mills got stuck and that's all he could think of?

[Will I. Cooling]

Or-its a fucking brilliant story so let's stop nitpicking.

Will

[Grae the puppetmaker]

Hope not. I've enjoyed Savage but this feels a bit 'now Bill has avenged his wife & kids we'd better off another family member just to keep him motivated'. Not really necessary I think.

[Matt Timson]

Well you know, he *was* a lorry driver before the war...

;)

[Queen Firey-Bou]

ahhh so thats what happened. damn my short attention span.

shit i better go into hiding before my heresy is met by the flaming napalm guns of wrath.

[petemaskreplica]

I kind of assumed that was the point. Bill Savage is essentially a psychopath (I use the term in a strict medical sense). He's been using his dead wife and kids as an excuse for his killing sprees. Once he has killed Vashkov he needs to find another reason to justify his actions. Hence when he discovers his brother's dead, rather than accept any responsibility, he invents an "unknown force", which sidesteps his partial culpibility and provides a spurious reason to go on killing people.

Well, that's how I read it, anyway. Whatever, Mills is asking some difficult questions here about what differentiates a freedom fighter from a terrorist, and I'm really looking forward to seeing where he takes it from here.

[The Adventurer]

Or, Bill's so crazy that he doesn't care who he kills on his quest to kill Volgs, even family.  Not saying he did it intentionaly, but it's such an odvious hole in the plan, subconsisly Bill probibly knew what it would lead to but did nothing about it.

Savage is such a great read, because Pat does ask the hard questions.

[Artificial Idiot]

To be fair, you can't place all the blame on Bill. Tom himself knew what was going on, and knew exactly what was going to happen if he didn't go into hiding. And yet, he didn't.

I'd say it's as much, if not more, his fault than Bill's. After all, if I was taking over the identity of my brother to go and kill the president of the occupying nation, I'd sure expect my brother to bugger off to Canada or something.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Didn't Tom want to die? I thought he'd had enough of being a patsy/ couldn't stand what they'd done to his daughter/ was ill.

Or something.

Sheesh. This story was told only in the last few months.

Why can I remember everything about (say) Flesh from 25 years ago but not something from 2.5 months ago?

[Thursday]

Hmm.  Never got the impression Tom wanted to die, but I could've missed something.  I assumed he was just pissed off about what happened to his daughter.

AI's point is a good'un: surely Tom would have sussed that allowing his nutter of a brother to pose as him to assassinate a head of state could, maybe, just possibly have repercussions?  

I'd also like to know what'll happen to the article(s) Tom wrote but didn't have the guts/wasn't dumb enough to publish.

[Leigh S]

We dont know that Tom wasnt trying to escape, but needed to go to his office to get something important (in a Pulp Fiction style), only to meet his final end...

But the way it's written does make it sound as if he might have just turned up to work the next day.

You'd also think that Bill pretending to be his own brother would put the heat on him - especially since two of the three Savage siblings are known troublemakers.  Still, the rest of the story is good enough to get me making up explanations for the more odd elements...

[Thursday]

"We dont know that Tom wasnt trying to escape, but needed to go to his office to get something important only to meet his final end..."

Quite.  Given the high quality of the story so far I'm inclined to believe it's down to things yet to be revealed, rather than plot holes and sloppy writing.  

Any word on when the next installment's coming?

[Oddboy]

I also thought this was a bit strange... but maybe Tom was just being really dense or maybe BillAKAJack planned to kill everyone that could identify the assassin?

Anyway - regards to the usual Pat Mills gripes: HURRAH!! He's ended this 'book' at an appropriate place! That's how to end a book; with an ending - it throws out a few twists-&-what-happens-next?-isms, to keep you interested in getting the next book, but it wraps up all the points of this book nicely.

ALL HAIL MILLS!

[Quirkafleeg]

I like the obviously psycho-sexual relationship he now seems to have with his shoota'