Some people just can’t catch a break. Everyone knows the type — not particularly bad looking, have everything going for them — but their luck is just really, really bad. This is the case in British comedian Ben Elton’s new novel.

“Blast from the Past” is a collision of unlikely events, with people in the wrong place at the wrong time, three worlds intersecting on one devastating night and an ending to the madness that is incomprehensible in more ways than one.

In the book, the classic case study in bad luck is British anarchist Polly Slade. Polly leads a life that is anything but the norm, living for part of her adolescence in a radical commune in roofless mud huts. Hating the American soldiers that invaded her country, Slade was the most surprised when she fell in love with one.

Jack Kent, the youngest general in the Army’s history, loved being a soldier even more than Polly hated them. The two were a clash in every way but one — they were in love. But one day Jack left with not even so much as a good-bye, knowing that his cherished career could be ruined forever if the Army ever knew of the affair. Slade was left crushed and heartbroken, not to mention pretty pissed off.

Now, 16 years later, Jack is a four-star Army general on the verge of reaching the Presidency. Polly is living in a dismal, cluttered apartment in Britain, fearing the day that the ring of the phone will bring the stalker she refers to as “The Bug” back into her life.

Elton writes, “‘The Bug’ was what Polly called Peter … A bug is a thing that annoys you. It buzzes into your life and is difficult to get rid of, but it can’t hurt you or kill you; all it can do is buzz.”

“The Bug” has been absent from Polly’s life for over a month, fearing the restraining order against him. So when the phone rings at 2 a.m., Polly knows it can only be “The Bug,” welcoming himself back into her world, and she is instantly terrified.

But fate has a way of saying, “Not so fast. Things are not always as they seem.”

The voice on the other end of the line is not Peter; even more shocking, it’s Jack. The man who broke Polly’s heart has just breezed back into her life.

But “The Bug” is also back, and he’s had enough. While Jack and Polly catch up on 16 years of lost time, Peter is waging a war against the two people betraying him in the tiny British apartment. And he’s patiently waiting for the moment to strike.

When he finally does make his move, it becomes clear that nothing was as it seemed before, and nothing will ever be the same again.

If there is one thing Elton is, it’s unpredictable. Maybe the humor is just a little more twisted on the English side of the lake, or maybe American authors are in a rut. One thing is sure: A morbid humor like Elton’s hasn’t sprung from America’s shores since … well … ever.

What would normally follow the course in America of a typical boy meets girl, boy dumps girl, boy returns years later and they live happily ever after, isn’t particularly cared for by the English chaps.

Elton takes his novel a step further and goes way out on a limb. At the end of this story, no one is happy and neither boy gets the girl. Go England.

3 Stars

Ratings based on a 5 Star scale