Review - The Devil's Paintbrush by Jake Arnott is out now in paperback, and appropriately for lgbt history month deals with the turn of the century (that's 19th to 20th) dealings of Major General Sir Hector Macdonald.

"Fighting Mac", as he was otherwise known, was a military hero of the Victorian Empire. Then following allegations of homosexuality in 1903, he shot himself in the head while staying in Paris. There are monuments to the war hero's achievements, the most dubious of which must be that he is rumoured to be the model for the man on the Camp coffee label.



Jake Arnott uses his twisting crime writer mentality to imagine a meeting between Mac and renowned occultist Aleister Crowley. It is very probably that they did meet, but anything after that is pure imagination. The unlikely pair have what could be described as "a night on the town". Mac is worried about his impending tribunal and haunted by past loves, Crowley seems wrapped up in a Dan Brown style plot of his own devising - black mass, magic squares, a mysterious German lady and being sodomised by a candle (actually, don't think Brown did that one).

There are some nice ruminations on Mac's battles in Sudan, and the relationships he forms with his African men, one in particular who he seemed to love, but feels he ultimately betrayed. It's a shame then that in order to tell this back story Arnott had to use the old "almond laced with mescaline" trick to make it all dream-like. The most realistic part of the story becomes the most contrived.

There are other moments which might seem bonkers, but are actually true - such as the title. The Devil's Paintbrush was a machine gun that was so called because it painted sploshes of red, as if on a canvas, but also at 666 rounds per minute. Creepy.

It is best then to discard the idea of an historical novel, and see what else it has to offer. The Devil's Paintbrush is sleazy, witty and an exciting journey. Its strengths are not dissimilar to Arnott's London crime novels, but it also throws a bit of colonialism, social class and homosexual history into the mix.

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