High Society by Ben Elton

A disjointed tale of drugs, sex and politics

Everyone's out of their heads on scag, smack, coke, speed, charlie, Es, whatever. Look up from the pages of Ben Elton's new novel and you are mildly surprised to see anyone able to walk in a straight line. Pop star Tommy is hoovering up the cocaine on the way to the Brit awards. He kicks his posh girlfriend Emily, born with a silver spoon stuck up her nose, out of the limo.

Emily will top up her pharmaceutical levels in Brixton. Tommy will get even higher at the Brits, fall into the metaphorical and literal gutter and then chase up and down the land trying to save a young thin prostitute with big breasts and eyes. There's no mileage in saving a lardy old prostitute with slack skin and varicose veins.

At the Brits, not that he remembers it, Tommy is to meet up with Peter Paget: a backbench MP with a mission. Paget wants to legalise all drugs – the whole shooting match, not just Rosy Rizla's favourite smoke.

This is a popular idea at middle-class dinner parties. Crime and banditry will cease and peace and harmony will be restored to the land once the government starts handing out drugs like orange juice. The middle classes will sleep soundly in their beds, while the underprivileged will stay docile and drugged on their decaying estates. And think of the benefits to the Exchequer.

Difficult to tell, from this novel, where Ben Elton stands on this one. We get a lot from Paget expounding the benefits of government-issued drugs. Elton's heart doesn't always seem in the argument . Are we meant to think that a chance to save the nation is lost by one man's folly, or is he just a tosser with daft ideas?

Filled with righteous zeal, Paget goes on his crusade, but he has an Achilles heel in the lissom form of his parliamentary assistant, Samantha. She turns out to be as mad as a meataxe, and the instrument of her boss's downfall.

The story lines are laid down, and the coke lines snorted up, as Elton shifts locations from Bangkok to Birmingham, from Parliament to The Priory. Elton seems to lose interest in some of them. A bit of murder and menace within the Drug Squad drifts in and out of the pages, ending bloodily and unconvincingly with a revenge killing. Elton doesn't read as though he is at ease with this sort of material, preferring to stick with the downfall of Paget, and, of course, the obligatory saving of the winsome, big-breasted prostitute.

Some voices work better than others. Paget, with his mix of reforming zeal and self-deception, rings true. Other characters remain unconvincing, their mouths full of the wrong vocabulary. Paths cross and plot lines weave together, but the characters have no real relationships with one another, and no internal life. Elton's last book, Dead Famous, was an impressive blend of whodunnit and social comment, with something to say about the destructive lure of fame; but High Society isn't quite in that class.