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Dead Air

3.38 of 5 stars 3.38 · rating details · 2,385 ratings · 85 reviews

There's no question that the anticipation for each successive Iain Banks novel grows ever greater, and Dead Air is a literary event. The sardonic, inventive prose guarantees a unique reading experience with each new book (the misfires may be counted on one hand), and whatever genre he tackles, Banks is one of the most stimulating writers at work in Britain today.

His prota

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Paperback, 436 pages

Published 2003 by Abacus (first published 2002)

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Nov 17, 2012 Manny rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts, well-i-think-its-funny

Many people appear to hate this book, for reasons that aren't completely clear to me. I really liked it. OK, the main character, a British shock jock, is a bit of an asshole, but he's a very entertaining asshole. I didn't find it difficult to accept him on his own terms, and just get on with enjoying the story. And as for all the indignation that a sublimely beautiful woman should fall for this horrible person... well, in an ideal world that maybe wouldn't happen, but you only have to open a gos...more

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Dec 02, 2011 Shovelmonkey1 rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who like a book that does what it says on the tin

Recommended to Shovelmonkey1 by: 1001 books list

Shelves: 1001-books, bookcrossing-books, brain-fluff, read-in-2010

What the critics (may have allegedly) said:
Dear Iain, please gain a little perspective and paint over your current social wallpaper; don your I heart Tony Blair t-shirt and form an orderly queue at the passport office.

What the monkey says:
Loved this! Admittedly this is my first foray into the world of Iain Banks (with or without the .M as I've never read any of his sci-fi either) but it did what it said on the tin. Pacey, engaging story of a gob-on-a-stick British shock jock and his whimsical an...more

13 likes · like · see review

Aug 28, 2012 Jonfaith rated it 3 of 5 stars

Laddish account of urban hedonism punctuated with progressive riffs against the ugly signs of our times. Banks made me laugh, but appeared to be going in opposite directions. One could imagine the subsequent torque generated would be exciting. It wasn't, at least not in such an artiistic arc. Banks plays a comic suspense effect pedal adroitly over the last 70 pages. I was impressed with that but was baffled per the novel as a whole.

I'd afford the novel another .5 for the dialogue which crackles.

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Mar 25, 2008 Brad rated it 4 of 5 stars

“Dead Air” is a little bit of all the things that make Iain Banks great. It is funny in the blackest of ways; it is political and demands that we pay attention to the serious issues it’s addressing; it is rich in characterization, making us love Ken Nott and all the strange denizens of London that he comes across; and it is, above all, entertaining. Iain Banks is the greatest living commonwealth writer to never be up for the Man Booker Prize, and he likely never will be, but he remains a writer...more

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Apr 18, 2013 Buck Doyle rated it 3 of 5 stars

Sometimes I have a hard time separating the author from the main character, ya? I had trouble enjoying this because the main character is a lecherous dude. He’s a controversial talk radio-er who prides himself on being a “militant liberal” but has that annoying thing of “no sacred cows” or whatever so he’s constantly saying incendiary shit about anyone and everyone, and it’s weird! Like I think power matters, ya.

I read it because of this mention in a post about the author announcing his impendin...more Sometimes I have a hard time separating the author from the main character, ya? I had trouble enjoying this because the main character is a lecherous dude. He’s a controversial talk radio-er who prides himself on being a “militant liberal” but has that annoying thing of “no sacred cows” or whatever so he’s constantly saying incendiary shit about anyone and everyone, and it’s weird! Like I think power matters, ya.

I read it because of this mention in a post about the author announcing his impending death from cancer:

As I wrote some years ago in Wired, his novel Dead Air is the first truly post-mobile-phone thriller I ever read, one where all the suspense comes from characters being in constant contact and knowing what the others are about, rather than the uncertainty of not being able to reach one another. There's a scene in that book, where someone is (view spoiler), that is nothing short of genius. Where the traditional mystery would have put the confederate through the stress of wondering what might be going on, in a position of total ignorance, Banks delivers a complete, minute-by-minute SMS set of updates to the confederate, and shows that knowing is infinitely more scary than ignorance, if handled by a master. Which he is.

Maybe it was just a bad idea, because “thriller” to me means agony waiting for the thrillering followed by fucking skip-reading during the thrillering because I can’t handle the tension and violence and just neeeeeed to know what happens. So the reader was telling me I had an hour left and I finished in half that because I couldn’t deal.

Banks has a knack for words at times.

For herself she says she has no fear because she feels she is half dead already. … She doesn’t mean half dead in any trivial sense of being tired-out or tired of life or anything like that, but half dead in a way unique to — and only capable of definition by — her own bizarre, self-made religion, a belief system without name, ceremony or teachings, which she cleaves to with the airy casualness of the truly convinced, not the fundamentalist intensity of those who secretly guess they may well be wrong.

Or this time when the protagonist is worried about the various lies and misdeeds of his life coming out:

I had a sudden fit of hull-breach-category paranoia, and waved one hand with what I hoped looked like airily casual dismissiveness.

Hull-breach-category paranoia!

Yeah. So. I’ve read Iain Banks before, his Culture series, of which Wikipedia says:

The Culture is a fictional interstellar anarchist, and utopian society created by the Scottish writer Iain M. Banks which features in a number of science fiction novels and works of short fiction by him, collectively called the Culture series.

Probably more my thing(less)

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Mar 25, 2013 Stephanie "Jedigal" rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 1001-books

Not nearly as good as his Complicity. Also, having read both those books fairly close together, they are too similar in style, tone, characters (not the 'facts' of the characters, but the 'feel' of them), to be really great. I think I would have enjoyed this one more if I had left a good year or three in between reading Complicity and this. Also, I don't know if the author's politics are reflected by his main characters' politics in these books, but that is part of what is too alike and tedious....more

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Nov 24, 2011 Haje rated it 3 of 5 stars

The plot is quite simple; We follow Kenneth (Or Ken Nott) a radio DJ on a moderately popular radio station in the time right after September 11. 2001. Surprisingly – or perhaps not, I am not quite sure yet – Ken is quite unaffected by the whole terrorist attack.

Public service announcement: This article does not contain any spoilers.

Dead Air – written by Iain Banks

published 2002, by Little, Brown publishing. (which, incidentally, is owned by time warner books. When will we see the film?

When I fir...more

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Oct 20, 2011 Andrew rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, contemporary

Written just after the September 11th attacks on New York this was billed as Banks’ response to it. That seems to be just a clever (or cynical) piece of marketing though as the event itself is only mentioned in passing right at the start of the novel, and has no affect on any of the characters.

The book is about a not especially pleasant character called Ken Nott, who is a shock jock on a London radio show. He is paid to say things that mainstream society finds outrageous, which basically seems t...more

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Jul 30, 2011 Josh rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I really enjoyed this. The premise is a bit strange and Banks basically uses the protagonist's job as a radio shock-jock in a post-9-11 world to rant about everything from imperialism to the destruction of the English language.

This seems to be the major beef that people have with the book, from reading the other reviews, but it was actually this ranting that I really enjoyed. Whether I agreed 100% with every word of what Mr. Kenny (Mc)Nutt was saying during any given rant in the book or not, I...more

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Dec 14, 2009 F.R. rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Iain Banks is a good writer with a modern, highly readable prose style (although the books sometimes seem lazily edited). I’m a great fan of ‘The Wasp Factory’ and ‘The Crow Road’, however his ratio of hits to misses is not that great.

There are a number of problems with this book:

Firstly, the lead character is a self-centred, selfish and distinctly unpleasant human being. He’s also at points a complete idiot. This makes him hard to root for. Secondly, the protagonist is a radio shock-jock. He is...more

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Aug 25, 2011 Gregory rated it 5 of 5 stars

Holy ye gods this book! Fabulous. The tone throughout, the way it built, and all the good gods once the suspense element REALLY kicked in! This would certainly be a spoiler alert warning review if I said anywhere near half what I want to say. As it is, I'm still not sure that I'm not revealing more than I should. After what may have been my favorite chapter in any book ever written in the English language, the following chapter destroyed me. It left my knees absolutely shaking. Even reminding my...more

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Nov 20, 2008 Mandie rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Masochists so far

Recommended to Mandie by: Neighbor whose life is likely to be cut short as a result ;)

Shelves: general-fiction

Dead Air. It should be called Hot Air.

Never in my life have I read a book with such a multitude of unlikeable characters. These are pseudo celebs and media whores, ploughing the depths of the tarnished glitterati and have no redeeming quality or anything whatsoever to endear them.

Ken Nott is a "shock jock", and ok, he makes a few good points, but there is nothing new or ground breaking, and the typescripts from a James Whale show meets George Galloway Talk Sport-esque rant-a-thon does not a no...more

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May 21, 2009 Becky rated it 2 of 5 stars

Another one to drop off the list, Dead Air is a perfectly entertaining but pretty straight forward account of the lives of the London media set post 9/11. Why being post 9/11 is apparently important to the story is a little confusing - aside from a couple of frankly pretty awkward rants the main character Ken, the DJ, manages to squeeze into the narrative, it's a pretty clumsy attempt to cash in on the post 9/11 fear. In fact, Dead Air seems to avoid a lot of the darker sides of humanity that hi...more

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Feb 17, 2013 Smcleish rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: owned

Originally published on my blog here in October 2003.

Published just about a year after 9/11, Dead Air must have been one of the first serious attempts at a novel in which the tragic events of that day played a part. That being said, it doesn't play that important a role in the plot, being more significant in the emotional background to the novel. It is hard to think of a novel that has survived any length of time which is quite so firmly rooted in identifiable and important near contemporary eve...more Originally published on my blog here in October 2003.

Published just about a year after 9/11, Dead Air must have been one of the first serious attempts at a novel in which the tragic events of that day played a part. That being said, it doesn't play that important a role in the plot, being more significant in the emotional background to the novel. It is hard to think of a novel that has survived any length of time which is quite so firmly rooted in identifiable and important near contemporary events; the best known examples I can think of are the panic about anarchists which prompted Conrad's The Secret Agent and Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday about a century ago. There are many more novels which were prompted by events which seemed more ephemeral even at the time and which are now only remembered because of the literature they inspired - the story of Alexander Selkirk which was the basis of Robinson Crusoe, for example. Usually, novelists seem to choose events which are far enough in the past that their importance is clear, if they want to anchor a novel to a specific historical time, or events which are so important and wide-ranging in their effects that time has to be taken to digest even part of their meaning - people don't tend to write the best war stories during the conflict.

The tone of Dead Air is set by the first chapter, in which a wedding celebration turns into a game of dropping superfluous foodstuffs and possessions from a loft apartment into the car park far below, wanton destruction which is interrupted as everyone's mobiles go off to tell them to turn on the TV and see the attack on the World Trade Center. The novel is full of small unexpected ironies, twists and unusual ways of looking at the world (picking up on the phenomenon of everyone's phone going off more or less simultaneously is an example). In Canal Dreams, Banks has written about people more directly involved as victims of terrorist attacks; 9/11 seems to have been an event which was more than usually able to touch those who were not themselves physically harmed.

The story is about "shock jock" Ken Nott, who makes a pretty good living being outrageous on a London radio station. There are several events which form foci to the novel as well as 9/11 - the difficulties which arise from a love affair with the wife of a gangster, a series of death threats, a TV interview in which Nott confronts a Holocaust denier. The plot does rather come across as the setting for Banks to get the series of rants which he makes the main feature of Nott's radio show out of his system.

Dead Air came across to me as the least interesting of Banks' novels to date; there is nothing in it which reaches out and grabs the reader (or if there is, it missed me completely). That is not to say that it isn't well written and enjoyable, more that it is less individual and unusual than his earlier novels.(less)

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May 28, 2009 Bob rated it 5 of 5 stars

The main character is a highly articulate, somewhat monomaniacal provocative talk radio host in London - this sometimes feels like a mechanism by which the author can advance his political views in lengthy monologues but it is also extremely funny and engaging.

Among other topics (and depending on your politics), you may deeply sympathize with the character's frustrated attempt to argue out the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a fiercely Zionist ex-girlfriend, getting a drink thrown in his face...more

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May 28, 2012 Kim rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

Not my best Iain Bank although i did get two cracking quotes from it
I thought the end a little too neat - too tied up in a pretty bow and sent on its smiling way
although maybe the point was that for the characters it was the most unexpected outcome

hmmm - i just though that now as i typed - will have to rethink what i thought i thought about this book now
don't you love it when that happens?

so - the story is about a shock jock and his life - kind of
and falling in love with an unsuitable person whe...more

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May 14, 2012 Pippa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Following the exploits of radio DJ Ken Nott in the wake of 9/11 Banks has created a fast paced, slightly surreal novel that allows him to rant through the main protaganist about a huge array of topics. I found the character Ken to be arrogant, irritating and in need of a kick up the arse and being told to grow up and get over it. Nonetheless he was still compelling and towards the end I did feel genuine empathy towards him. The antics regarding the Holocaust denier were particularly brilliant. A...more

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Jul 31, 2011 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary-fiction

It's been a while since I read anything by Iain Banks. This book reminded me why I have loved almost everything he has written. This book is a remarkably accurate depiction of London in the 90's, particularly Soho. The characters are vivid, the action feels immediate and personal, the plot line is utterly unpredictable and 'edge of seat' tense. Iain has never shied away from detailing all aspects of the human experience and this book is no exception, there are many scenes in this book that invol...more

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May 07, 2012 Ellen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Dead Air starts slowly, annoyingly even. Part of this is the protagonist's persona coming through. Ken McNutt is an annoying, opinionated man who I at times hated and others felt sorry for. Despite not really liking the book much I did however find it hard to stop reading, in part due to my dislike of not finishing something I have started, in part because there is a thread of intrigue that keeps you turning the pages even though you can't really be bothered.
Whether this is a deliberate tactic i...more

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Oct 22, 2012 Derek Baldwin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Quite similar to Espedair Street in many ways. I have to say that I found the protagonist an annoying self-centred tosser, there's no polite way to put it. He's the sort of person who refers to his LandRover (tosser), as a Landy (tosser!), and witters on and on about his alcohol and drug consumption (grow up, tosser!!).

I considered chucking this one aside half-read more than once but I stuck with the story because I assumed Banks would give him his come-uppance sooner or later. Which he does, th...more

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Feb 21, 2013 Samantha rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: didn-t-finish, books-i-own

This was my first venture into Iain Banks' books and I was slightly dissapointed. I had previously heard nothing but good words about this book and author and thought I would give it a try. However, I didn't get very far into this book until I got very bored and just stopped reading. I hadn't identified a strong plot idea yet (or any), and that is what I think the book is lacking. Of course, I never finished it, so I cannot presume that there was no gripping plot throughout (and guessing from th...more

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Mar 13, 2011 Peter added it

Stick with it: Dead Air is one of the 'M'-less Iain Banks' less ambitious works: a straightforward comic thriller in which yet another Banks alter ego (straight-talking, amoral, hard-living Scottish socialist, much the same character as the journalist in Complicity) gets tangled up with a gangster whose wife he is having an affair with. It takes a while to get going - Banks fans have read many of these rants before, while the diverse supporting cast is perhaps not as memorable as usual - but whe...more

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Jul 04, 2010 Esteli rated it 4 of 5 stars

any book where 9/11 is a plot point kinda makes me wince, but past that i really liked this book. It was one of those "i'm travelling in some non english speaking country and starved for books in my language" finds, and i remember devouring it, though of course in that state of mind you'd devour cookbooks. anyway, the main character is this douche who gets himself into all sorts of trouble, fucks hot women, gets drunk and says snarky things. (as far as i remember, i read this last a few years ag...more

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Sep 15, 2012 James rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 1001-books, read-in-teenties, read-in-2012, london, 4-stars, reviewed

Historically I've struggled with Iain Banks novels. Three out of four of his novels that I've started have ended up on my didnt-finish shelf. Iain M. Banks is a another case entirely mind – his science-fiction I adore. So, it was with some trepidation that I ventured into another of Banks' non-science-fiction novels. But, Louise had a copy knocking about and it was listed in the 1 001 Books You Must Read Before You Die book so when it reached the top of the to-read list I decided to give it a g...more Historically I've struggled with Iain Banks novels. Three out of four of his novels that I've started have ended up on my didnt-finish shelf. Iain M. Banks is a another case entirely mind – his science-fiction I adore. So, it was with some trepidation that I ventured into another of Banks' non-science-fiction novels. But, Louise had a copy knocking about and it was listed in the 1 001 Books You Must Read Before You Die book so when it reached the top of the to-read list I decided to give it a go.

Ken Nott is a radio DJ, a shock-jock, for a commercial London radio station called Capital Live! (not in anyway supposed to sound like Capital FM I suspect). He's argumentative, not overly likeable, and a bit of a whore. Somehow Banks still manages to make him readable – for a start he's clever (although not usually wise), and funny and very quick with his responses, which do seem to distract you from his lack of any real kind of moral fibre. When not insulting religious groups on his show, picking up women in bars or drinking with his mates, he is managing to cheat on his girlfriend with the most beautiful women he has ever seen. Who, just happens to be the wife of London's most notorious gangster. So, no chance of anything going wrong there then.

Dead Air is the term for any time when a radio station should be broadcasting something, but is in fact silent. Generally stations fear these gaps like people do awkward pauses in conversations, but some radio DJs deliberately use these gaps for effect. I wonder if, in this context it is also trying to refer to something else? Empty airspace over London maybe? A pause in people's lives as the events of 9/11 hit them? Many reviewers have described this as a post-9/11 novel, and to an extent it is – it is both written and set after that event. But it doesn't really seem to dwell on the event. It is mentioned briefly as the news breaks while most of the characters are at a party, and there are a couple of references to quieter skies and people feeling less trusting on the tube, but that's it. This isn't some huge 9/11 statement that I could see.

In fact, the biggest political section of the book is where Ken sets himself up against a holocaust denier which has quite a long teased build-up giving you lots of opportunity to try and work out his secret plan. (view spoiler)

It's a slow starter, very slow; a couple of times I really wondered if I was going to see the whole thing through or not. But as the book wore on, Ken wormed his way into my affections and I started to care (a little bit anyway). It helped that the pace of the book picks up (slowly) as it progresses and eventually his life begins to truly fall apart. Most of the other characters are fairly thin, but we are seeing it from Ken's point-of-view and he's a fairly shallow individual, so that actually kinda makes sense, and the ending is a little too neat maybe, but maybe I've misjudged Iain Banks without the M. and I need to go restart some of those books that I gave up on before. Finally, surely at least some bonus points for managing to have an entire page and a half of text contained in a single set of parentheses – that's some side-statement!(less)

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Sep 25, 2011 Michele rated it 3 of 5 stars

I give it 4 stars for dialogue and, in the end, because I did like the main character, although I didn't necessarily like him at the beginning. I only gave it 3 stars for the story, though, because, while it's billed as a thriller, it had such a slow place, I forgot it was supposed to be a thriller. It's entirely possibly I didn't enjoy this as much as a Brit or a Scot would, since it takes place in London with a Scot as the main character, and I'm sure I missed some of the jokes., but it was re...more

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Nov 27, 2010 Mike rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a witty and inventive book. He is thoroughly familiar with London, and the details regarding the small radio station production ring true. This an amusing rollercoaster ride involving drugs, villains, sexual encounters, fear and failure. Not a culture to be applauded but vicariously enjoyed in the hope that at base it isn’t really true - although it probably it. Wonderful writing and a very believeable main character, even when he’s lying.

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Sep 29, 2011 Katie Grainger rated it 4 of 5 stars

Dead Air is a black comedy focusing on Ken Nott, a shock jock working in London with a complicated love life. Ken has big opinions which he frequently airs on his radio show. I liked Dead Air, and I liked the character Ken Nott, who isn't a particularly nice man but he is an entertaining one.

This novel starts off slow but the ending is quite exciting and kept the pages turning!

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May 04, 2009 Catherine rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: bookcrossing

Ken is not terribly nice on the surface - a shock jock who smokes, takes drugs, drinks too much, and has little loyalty to other people. He never really becomes thoroughly likeable, but by the end one is glad he survives (nothing given away there - it's a first person narrative after all) and, it would seem, is redeemed to a certain extent.

I continue to wince at the gore Banks finds necessary in both his incarnations and prefer his later work where it is less prominent. This one gets pretty gri...more

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Feb 18, 2013 Dave Jenkinson rated it 1 of 5 stars

Couldn't finish it. It's not that it was badly written I just had no desire to carry on reading. I was disinterested in the lead character and couldn't establish any particular plot or driving narrative. It was mostly just a bunch of shock jock rants. The excitement I usually feel at the prospect of picking up my book to read the next installment was absent for this book. Quite surprised as I have enjoyed a good few Iain Banks books in the past.

I used to force myself to read on and finish books...more

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Dec 18, 2012 Tanis rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm really not a fan of this book, I'm struggling to get through it. I don't like any of the characters, I don't find them at all believeable and the plot is too vague to hold my attention. I'm only carrying on with it because I've hit the point of no return.

If this was the first Iain Banks book I'd ever read I wouldn't read another.

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About Iain Banks

This author also publishes science fiction under the pseudonym Iain M. Banks.

Banks's father was an officer in the Admiralty and his mother was once a professional ice skater. Iain Banks was educated at the University of Stirling where he studied English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology. He moved to London and lived in the south of England until 1988 when he returned to Scotland, living in Edi...more This author also publishes science fiction under the pseudonym Iain M. Banks.

Banks's father was an officer in the Admiralty and his mother was once a professional ice skater. Iain Banks was educated at the University of Stirling where he studied English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology. He moved to London and lived in the south of England until 1988 when he returned to Scotland, living in Edinburgh and then Fife.

Banks met his wife Annie in London, before the release of his first book. They married in Hawaii in 1982. However, he announced in early 2007 that, after 25 years together, they had separated. He currently lives in North Queensferry, a town on the north side of the Firth of Forth near the Forth Bridge and the Forth Road Bridge.

As with his friend Ken MacLeod (another Scottish writer of technical and social science fiction) a strong awareness of left-wing history shows in his writings. The argument that an economy of abundance renders anarchy and adhocracy viable (or even inevitable) attracts many as an interesting potential experiment, were it ever to become testable. He was a signatory to the Declaration of Calton Hill, which calls for Scottish independence.

In late 2004, Banks was a prominent member of a group of British politicians and media figures who campaigned to have Prime Minister Tony Blair impeached following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In protest he cut up his passport and posted it to 10 Downing Street. In an interview in Socialist Review he claimed he did this after he "abandoned the idea of crashing my Land Rover through the gates of Fife dockyard, after spotting the guys armed with machine guns." He relates his concerns about the invasion of Iraq in his book Raw Spirit, and the principal protagonist (Alban McGill) in the novel The Steep Approach to Garbadale confronts another character with arguments in a similar vein.

Interviewed on Mark Lawson's BBC Four series, first broadcast in the UK on 14 November 2006, Banks explained why his novels are published under two different names. His parents wished to name him Iain Menzies Banks but his father made a mistake when registering the birth and he was officially registered as Iain Banks. Despite this he continued to use his unofficial middle name and it was as Iain M. Banks that he submitted The Wasp Factory for publication. However, his editor asked if he would mind dropping the 'M' as it appeared "too fussy". The editor was also concerned about possible confusion with Rosie M. Banks, a minor character in some of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves novels who is a romantic novelist. After his first three mainstream novels his publishers agreed to publish his first SF novel, Consider Phlebas. To distinguish between the mainstream and SF novels, Banks suggested the return of the 'M', although at one stage he considered John B. Macallan as his SF pseudonym, the name deriving from his favourite whiskies: Johnnie Walker Black Label and The Macallan single malt.

His latest book is a science fiction (SF) novel in the Culture series, called The Hydrogen Sonata, published in 2012.(less)

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“Political correctness is what right-wing bigots call what everybody else calls being polite” — 3 people liked it

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