12:23: Paris. 31st August 1997 Eoin McNamee Faber & Faber, 304pp, £12.99
The title of Eoin McNamee’s novel derives from the precise time that Princess Diana’s car crashed in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel. It proceeds to imagine the events that surrounded the accident. In this parallel world, a team of former Special Branch agents have been assembled to follow the princess
in Paris; while they are a shady bunch, it turns out they are the least sinister of the people who are circling her.
Diana herself is kept at a distance. She is only referred to as “Spencer” throughout: security parley, presumably, but also a good way of avoiding the heavy connotations that her usual title brings. Without a doubt, McNamee presents a sensationalised account, but perhaps no more so than those that the tabloids, or Mohamed Al Fayed, have been touting for the past decade. Meanwhile the plot, developed minute by minute, is just the countdown to the inevitable.
As with Stephen Frears’s film The Queen, you’re reminded how these true-life events do, even without the help of art, have a mystery of their own. Even if it doesn’t bring us any closer to understanding the evening’s real protagonists, McNamee’s book is both a thoughtful thriller, and an interesting appendix to the events of August 1997.
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