The Satsuma Complex

Read Time: 3 Minutes

After enjoying Bob Mortimer’s The Long Shoe, I later picked up The Satsuma Complex and ended up listening straight through into its follow-up, The Hotel Avocado, without a pause between the two… or (as I realised later) stopping to write a review of the first. Oops!

By the time I finished, the stories had blended together into what felt less like separate novels and more like one long, shaggy-dog tale told in two parts, which makes reviewing them as a single unit feel like the most natural approach, so this review will encompass both.

At the centre of both is Gary Thorn, an utterly average man whose life quietly drifts into strange territory after a work acquaintance, Brendan, goes missing following a night at the pub. Around the same time, Gary meets a woman who disappears just as abruptly, leaving behind only a book “The Satsuma Complex” and a lingering sense that something isn’t right.

From there, Gary finds himself nudged into a seemingly low-stakes conspiracy involving questionable detectives, criminals who may or may not be competent, and situations that feel far bigger than he is.

Like The Long Shoe, Mortimer’s storytelling resists tidy genre labels. The Satsuma Complex wears the loose shape of a murder mystery or thriller, but it’s really more of a cosy, meandering character study. Gary isn’t a detective, amateur or otherwise; he’s just a man reacting to events as they happen, often badly, and frequently distracted by small, irrelevant details.

Mortimer’s fondness for characters who talk to animals, fixate on domestic minutiae, or wander off into mental side streets is very much present again here. If you’d listened to these before The Long Shoe, the thematic overlap might feel a little striking but taken together it starts to feel like a deliberate voice rather than repetition.

Mortimer narrates Gary’s chapters himself, and his delivery is relaxed, slightly rushed, and unmistakably him. It’s less polished than a professional narrator, complete with the occasional shuffle or background noise, but that scruffiness suits the material.

Sally Phillips joins him as Emily, bringing a calm, grounded tone that balances Gary’s quiet confusion. In The Hotel Avocado, the production tightens up slightly and expands the cast further, with Phillips returning alongside Paul Whitehouse and Julie Maisey, which adds welcome texture and variety.

Although The Satsuma Complex runs just under seven hours, it feels denser than that suggests, packed with odd encounters, small absurdities, and seemingly meaningless moments that somehow deepen the characters rather than stall the plot.

The Hotel Avocado picks up naturally from there, shifting the focus to consequences and “what happens after,” without losing the laid-back humour or drifting into something louder or more dramatic.

Listening to them back-to-back made them feel like one complete story: a gentle, funny, slightly off-kilter exploration of people muddling through choices, bad decisions, and criminal conspiracies they barely understand.

They’re not laugh-out-loud funny, and they’re not especially suspenseful either, but they’re consistently engaging in that uniquely Mortimer way.

Would I listen again? Probably. They’re easy to sink into, easy to follow, and oddly comforting despite the gangsters, missing people, and looming danger.

Taken together, The Satsuma Complex and The Hotel Avocado form a quietly enjoyable, loosely connected whole. Proof that Bob Mortimer’s particular brand of nonsense continues to work very well in audiobook form.

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