"The war on drugs has been lost. The simple fact is that the whole world is rapidly becoming one vast criminal network. From pop stars and royal princes to crack whores and street kids, from the Groucho Club toilets to the poppy fields of Afghanistan, we are all partners in crime.

High Society is a story about Britain today, a criminal nation in which everybody is either breaking the law or knows people who do. It takes the reader on a hilarious, heartbreaking and terrifying journey through the kaleidoscope world that the law has created and from which the law offers no protection" - Taken from the blurb on the back of the book.

Very funny and equally poignant. Ben Elton has scored another hit with this!

Sent to DJGib

Thanks a lot for this book, I'm looking forward to reading it.

I wouldn't say Ben Elton at his best, but it was certainly a compulsive read and very thought-provoking. I was particularly struck by Jessie's story, and in particulary the fact that so many girls are not as lucky as she was provides a strong argument in favour of the legalisation of drugs.
I didn't find this book as funny as some of Elton's others (which is not necessarily a drawback), but Cathy Paget's dealings with the press certainly made me smile.

RonOren would like to read this one as well...

Got it. Will put it on the bottom of the TBR-pile and will get to it at some point in the future.

I certainly wouldn't call this funny. There are some funny bits (indeed, as DJgib said, Cathy Paget's stuff and some of Tommy Hanson's antics), but most of it is very harrowing. To me, it was two different stories: the one of Peter Paget, trying to do something good for once about drugs and en passant get some political mileage out of it (although, to his credit, he neither expect nor aims for that in the beginning); and almost completely divorced from that, the story of Jessie, trying to get away from the twin horrors of a heroine-addiction and prostitution.
Jessie's story is certainly very moving and equally heroic; if kicking a heroine-habit inside a drug-brothel isn't brave enough, she has to start the fight over and over again. Paget's story, on the other hand, is little more than cringing, yet sounds ever so true: having gotten his (and the fight on drugs') big break, he only goes and throws it away on something as stupid as lying about an affair.

It's not Ben Elton the comedian that wrote this, but it is certainly the same social critic that we see in any of his other books. Even if the books where he does use humour are much more enjoyable, this one is as good in exposing a rotten bit of society as any other one. I wouldn't call it an enjoyable read, but it is a good one!

At the painkiller section ;-)