An adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo written in 2000 by Stephen Fry, with the setting changed to England in 1980 but the basic plot following the original, and with the characters both based on the originals and their names either puns or anagrams.
Ned Maddstone (Edmond Dantes) is the son of an MP and a young Oxford student with a bright future ahead of him who is mutually head-over-heels in love with Portia (Mercedes). He is also unknowingly an object of resentment for Rufus Cade (Caderousse) for generally being better than him at pretty much everything, Ashley Barson-Garland (Baron Danglars) for knowing that he is a social climber who is covering up his working-class roots, and Gordon Fendeman (Fernand Mondego) for stealing his cousin Portia's heart and leaving the thoroughly mediocre Fendeman no hope of winning her for himself.
The three of them plan to humiliate him by planting drugs on him, but because (unbeknownst to everyone) a letter Ned was asked to pass on by a dying acquaintance is linked to the IRA his arrest on suspicion of drug possession turns into a high-level interrogation by secret service agent Oliver Delft (de Villefort). While quickly realising that Ned is completely innocent, Delft also finds out that the person to whom Ned was asked to deliver the letter is his own mother, and realises he can turn the career-destroying revelation to his advantage by blackmailing his mother for juicy information he can "discover" in the course of his investigations. Naturally, this requires Ned and his secret to disappear off the face of the earth, but Delft prefers not to kill people whose connections may make them useful one day.
Ned is beaten, drugged and sent to an asylum off the coast of Sweden, where the doctors collaborate to program him to believe that his memories of his former life are delusional. After a decade of meek behaviour, Ned is allowed to mingle with the other inmates, one of whom, "Babe" Fraser (Abbe Faria), takes Ned under his wing and spends the next decade sharing his vast education and mental disciplines that had enabled him to accrue the immense fortune and knowledge of dangerous secrets that led to his being imprisoned like Ned. During the course of their friendship, Babe helps Ned piece together how and why he ended up there, and after his death Ned finds instructions for how to escape and access the vast sum of money Babe had accrued before his incarceration.
Soon afterwards, the fabulously wealthy and mysterious internet entrepreneur "Simon Cotter" (Monte Cristo) comes to England. What follows is a meticulously planned and sadistic revenge on the men who stole Ned Maddstone's life, ensuring the various other terrible things they've done come home to roost.
The title comes from The Duchess of Malfi, which includes the line "We are merely the stars' tennis balls, struck and bandied which way please them."
This book provides examples of:
- The Ace:
- Ned is good at pretty much everything and has the world at his feet. He's not deliberately condescending about it, but this just infuriates the jealous even more.
- Babe is the intellectual version, seeming to be a master of every mental art imaginable.
- Cotter, combining Ned's abilities with Babe's, is more formidable than either.
- Adaptational Villainy: A couple of the villains are arguably worse than their counterparts from the original story.
- In the original story, Danglars was an extremely greedy Corrupt Corporate Executive. In this novel, Ashley is a child pornographer.
- In the original story, Fernand betrayed his lord and sold the lord's daughter into slavery. In this novel, Gordon Fenderman raped the underage daughter of the tribe he betrayed.
- Asshole Victim: Fortunately for the plot, the three boys who pulled a prank on Ned that was extremely malicious (but unlikely to even result in jail time and a criminal record if other circumstances hadn't intervened,) have grown into men who have all done things far worse than their original crime. Consequently, Cotter is able to utterly destroy them by turning their various other crimes against them.
- The Atoner: According to Portia, Fendeman became this after Ned's disappearance, being utterly devastated that a mean-spirited prank put Ned in a position to be (he assumed) kidnapped and murdered, and spent a long time trying to find him. This does nothing to sway Cotter, but it's not clear if this is because he doesn't believe the remorse was genuine, doesn't care, or because he knows that Fendeman has done far worse and is planning to expose him for it.
- Best Served Cold: Cotter spends plenty of time ensuring that his enemies suffer for what they did to him.
- Can't Catch Up: Fendeman is a lifelong loser, and boy does he know it. He couldn't compete with Ned for Portia's heart, couldn't be a breadwinner for his wife (who he knows married him out of pity) and son, couldn't do well in business despite having inheritance money to act as a start-up, couldn't come up with any good ideas of his own, and (most fatally) couldn't hold true to the moral principles he genuinely had, crossing the
Moral Event Horizon in spectacular fashion. When his world comes crashing down, some of his last thoughts focus on how even when plumbers come to the house, they instinctively turn to Portia or Albert, as if it doesn't even occur to them that he would know basic stuff about his own house, and the last time he sees his wife and son had an unspoken "don't make things worse" under their false assurances that he could handle the situation. - Character Tics: Ned had a habit of bouncing his knee when uncomfortable. When Portia realises who Cotter is and goes to speak to him, he does the same thing, but by this time it has become unusual for him because there's nothing else that can make him nervous any more.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Those who aren't Driven to Suicide get this; Cade gets tricked into selling sherbert to a vicious gang of cocaine dealers and bleeds to death over an hour when they cut his legs off, and Delft is given a choice of going through what Ned did or killing himself by swallowing burning coals. Both are decidedly unpleasant ways to go.
- Darker and Edgier: Of the original Count of Monte Cristo story, which itself could get pretty dark.
- In the original story, the Count becomes horrified when his vengeance plans have Gone Horribly Right and wonders My God, What Have I Done?. The Count deliberately pulls his punches somewhat against his final target and settles for merely scaring him straight. The Count was also "only" permanently jailed without suffering any Mind Rape. He eventually got a somewhat happy ending with a new girlfriend in Haydee.
- In this book, Ned is not only jailed but repeatedly Mind Raped in an attempt to psychologically break him. He also feels absolutely no remorse at how brutal his revenge gets on his targets, who in some cases suffer worse fates than their counterparts in the original story (Caderousse dies much faster than Rufus Cade, Villefort "only" went insane instead of suffering a Cruel and Unusual Death like Delft and Danglars was scared straight by the Count while Cotter exposes Ashley's being a child pornographer. Some of the villains themselves are arguably worse than their novel counterparts, as described under Adaptational Villainy above. Finally, Simon Cotter ends up alone and withdraws back to the asylum he was trapped in.
- The Devil Is a Loser: Non-supernatural version; the three boys who destroyed Ned are all pathetic, spiteful, vindictive, resentful losers, and they remain so even through the far worse things they do as adults. All of them internally whinge and feel victimised at their various crimes coming back to bite them, and two of them commit suicide rather than face the music.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Cotter's revenges on the three boys (for what was a malicious prank, but one that they couldn't possibly have known would have the repercussions it did, and not one they would have done if they'd known what the results would be) would be this, if they hadn't done various far worse things he could use against them.
- Downer Ending: Unlike the Bittersweet Ending of the original, (where the Count wins but at a hefty cost, and fails to rekindle his love with Mercedes but gets a new beloved in Haydee) and many adaptations (where the Count and Mercedes end up back together), this version ends miserably; Portia and her son abandon their lives and flee to parts unknown in terror of Cotter, and Cotter voluntarily reincarcerates himself in the asylum as he feels like he has nothing else to live for.
- Driven to Suicide: Two of Cotter's victims Barson-Garland and Fendeman have their various other crimes exposed so irrefutably that they kill themselves rather than face the music, while Delft is given a Sadistic Choice with an excruciating suicide as the option he chooses.
- Eating the Eye Candy: Ned is an athletic and good-looking guy, and when his ordeal and Babe's tutelage changes him from a self-deprecatingly charming teenager into an ultra-confident and authoritatively charming adult, a number of people notice and comment.
- Evil Is Petty: "Evil" may be too strong a word for the childish malice fuelling the initial prank, but it was still an expression of pure spite rather than a ruthless pursuit of personal gain. In the intervening years they have all done worse things with varying degrees of success, but they never lose the chips on their shoulders.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: From the time Ned disappears in 1980 to his escape in 2000, the world has changed a great deal. His astonishment over mobile phones, the advances in computing, the internet and the reunification of Germany allow several people to work out that he's some sort of escapee, though he manages to charm his way out of trouble.
- Foregone Conclusion: Openly being a retelling of the Count of Monte Cristo, it is inevitable and expected that Ned will be imprisoned, escape, return under a formidable new identity, and take a horrible revenge.
- He Knows Too Much: Ned unwittingly learns about Ashley Barson-Garland's middle-class roots by reading his diary. Ashley is a social climber who's desperate to pass himself off as an aristocrat. He becomes enraged that Ned knows his secret, and that someone else might find out.
- Hellhole Prison: The asylum in which Ned is incarcerated has an orderly who attempts to get sexual favours from the inmates, (and badly hurts Ned when he refuses,) and is run by a corrupt doctor who is happy to try and brainwash him into forgetting his past life.
- Humiliation Conga: Barson-Garland's downfall ends with a devastating revelation that he couldn't possibly recover from, but is preceded by a sting he was attempting to run backfiring hilariously on live TV, purely to embarrass him before destroying him.
- Internalized Categorism: Ashley Barson-Garland really, really hates that he was born into the middle class, when he thinks he should've been a Blue Blood. Half the diary entry Ned reads is Ashley ranting about how he is a "true" nobleman who could carry it off better than most of the actual aristocrats could, while the other half is his cursing his background and reminding himself of his exercises to pass himself off as someone from the upper classes. The entire entry absolutely reeks of self-hatred.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: Cotter's revenge is truly sadistic, and not justified by what they did to him (as they thought the arrest would have been nothing more than frightening and humiliating, and probably wouldn't have even resulted in a criminal record given Ned's family connections), but since they've all done other far worse things in the intervening years and he is able to cause these things to come back to bite them, he is able to get his satisfaction without going too far.
- Photographic Memory: Babe has perfect recall, which is how he is able to piece together exactly how Ned ended up where he is from details that Ned himself didn't realise were important.
- Pride: Accusations of arrogance come up repeatedly in different forms throughout the book. Ned comes to realise how his taking his status as The Ace for granted must have come across to The Resenter, but thinks that their treatment of him as a symbol of everything they hated rather than a human being with a life and feelings shows a far greater level of arrogance.
- Once Cotter starts taking his revenge, his total self-righteousness about it causes both his victims and their loved ones to accuse him of this.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil:
- Cotter's revenge on Fendeman comes by exposing him for, not only forming his supposedly ethical coffee business by forcing a tribe from their land to live in squalor but using the opportunity to rape the thirteen-year-old daughter of the tribal chief.
- Barson-Garland has not done this himself, but regularly uses pornography of underage boys.
- Referenced for absurdity early in the book when Portia's disapproving mother (unaware that Ned's been arrested) describes Ned breaking his promise to meet up with Portia as a form of rape, much to Portia's incredulity and fury at such a ridiculous comparison.
- The Resenter: All three of the boys who first got Ned arrested. They all have different reasons, but the common theme is that they find his blithe obliviousness to his status as The Ace even more infuriating than if he deliberately lorded his superiority over them. They then grow up continuing to be envious of those who do better than they do, are painfully aware of their own inferiority and spend their last moments thinking how unfair the world has been to them.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Since it's a retelling of one of the most coldly Machiavellian ever put to paper this is a given, though this version spends less time on this aspect; Cotter's return and revenge is mostly in the last quarter of the book, with far more focus given to Ned's life before his imprisonment and his tutelage under Babe.
- Sickeningly Sweethearts: Ned and Portia are exactly as over-the-top in their adoration for each other as you might expect for their age.
- The Sociopath: While the other three have capacity for guilt over their various crimes, Delft appears to be entirely devoid of any emotion except ambition. When he discovers that his mother is a Fenian traitor, he blackmails her to get information he can pass off as his own discoveries, and sends Ned to rot in the asylum. It is made clear he has done this to other people too. His relationship with his wife and children, though not abusive or even cold, is clearly totally secondary to his career, and he only brings them up in his last moments when he's grasping at straws to be shown mercy.
- That Man Is Dead: Played with. The narration from Cotter's POV alternates between both names, and during his revenges he is very happy to use his original name so his victims know exactly why their lives are about to implode/end, but when Portia recognises him and tries to get him to stop and he uses his original name she considers him to be a completely different man, and states categorically that he is not Ned Maddstone.
- Trans Nature: Ashley Barson-Garland is a very dark example. Ned reads his diary early in the book, and learns about Ashley's feeling that he was somehow born into the "wrong" social class and that he should've been a highborn aristocrat. He rants to himself about how actual young noblemen wouldn't accept him even though he thinks he would carry off nobility so much better than some of the noblemen do. He concludes by reminding himself of the exercises he plans to use to "improve" his accent and cover up his middle-class roots.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Lots of it, by multiple characters:
- First, Ned does it by reading Ashley's diary, enraging Ashley and making him realize that Ned knows all about his middle-class background.
- Ashley, Rufus and Gordon then do it when they frame Ned and unwittingly get him arrested by Oliver Delft.
- Finally, Delft does it when he has Ned shipped off to the asylum, setting the stage for Ned to become Simon Cotter.
- Vengeance Feels Empty: Played with. Cotter enjoys the revenges themselves very much, and has every intention of continuing with his life afterwards and using his vast wealth and power to do good in the world. However, when he finds that, as a direct result of his actions Portia and her son have fled the country in abject terror of him he is devastated.
- Villains Want Mercy: All of the ones in a position to beg do so, and those who aren't think it's unfair that their crimes have caught up with them.
- What Happened to the Mouse? We know that Portia and her son fled in panic after Cotter's revenge on Fendeman but we never find out where they go or what their life is like afterwards. We also never see how they handle the revelation that his crimes included an indisputable crossing of the Moral Event Horizon, and it was this that Cotter weaponised to bring him down rather than the original act of childish spite.
- You're Insane! Delft says this when he discovers what's in store for him, and repeats it later. Cotter is totally unfazed and replies with "So you keep saying. I don't understand how repeating it makes any difference. If it's untrue then you can hardly expect me to be swayed by insult. If it's true then I should have thought that it is even more useless to appeal to me."
