THE WRONG BOY

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'The Wrong Boy' is the debut novel of Liverpudlian playwright Willy Russell, famed for his plays-turned-films 'Educating Rita' and 'Shirley Valentine', and the West End musical stalwart 'Blood Brothers'. Both 'Rita' and 'Valentine' were star-making roles and if (and when) 'The Wrong Boy' makes it to the screen, the main character Raymond is likely to have the same effect on one lucky young actor. Teenager Raymond Marks has not had a charmed life. His profligate, instrument-loving father made an early exit, leaving him with a struggling mother and doting Sartre-fan grandmother. Fifteen minutes of potential glory when he saved a boy from drowning are cruelly compromised when it's discovered that the boys were near the canal indulging in what they called "flytrapping", and Raymond becomes "the precocious pervert, the evil influence, the filthy little beast". Eventually packed off to "Gulag Grimsby" at the suggestion of his despised Uncle Jason, Raymond pours out his life's woes in a series of missives to his idol, one-time Smiths' star Morrissey. Writing his letters with improbable speed, Raymond is ingratiating, unstoppable and superbly miserable, as befits a Morrissey devotee - and lucky enough to be surrounded by a bevy of gift-wrapped Northern character parts. Russell's genius is to take situations and characters that are firmly placed in the banally familiar - and then push them to their comic limits. In 'The Wrong Boy' those limits are tested to the full. - Alan Stewart