Tackle! by Jilly Cooper

Book Blurb
Jilly Cooper’s legendary hero returns!

Rupert Campbell-Black, all-conquering racehorse owner-trainer and handsomest man in England, is in the darkest of places. His adored wife, Taggie, is about to undergo chemotherapy. His beloved leading stallion has been assassinated.

Now his daughter Bianca is badgering him to buy into a failing local football club, Searston Rovers, so he can sign up her superstar striker boyfriend, Feral Jackson, and he and Bianca can return home from Perth to look after Taggie.

Rupert dislikes football and his first impressions of Searston are distinctly unfavourable. But as their new and indelibly competitive Chairman, he won’t stand for anything less than an Everest climb to the top of the Premier League.

With the help of the club’s ravishing and adorable secretary, Tember West, and his sassy Press Officer, Dora Belvedon, he becomes increasingly fond of his riotous mix of players, despite bawling them out whenever they face defeat.

Rupert’s explosive arrival at Searston causes outrage, so the fights are as furious off the field as on – particularly when glamorous WAGS flood in to stir up trouble and lust after Rupert…

Nor do the rival local football team, their duplicitous chairman and their corrupt dealings make things easier – let the scandals, sabotage and seductions begin…

My Review
Back in the summer of 1986 I was on holiday with my parents, we were swapping books when my mum gave me Riders to read and thus started my love affair with Rupert Campbell Black. I was only fourteen at the time and now, thirty five years later I am still drawn to this charming character and all his antics, so as soon as Tackle! landed through my letterbox I just had to read it straight away. Tackle! starts immediately after the ending of her previous book Mount, after the death of his favourite horse and his wife, Taggie, facing chemotherapy for her cancer. Their daughter Bianca wants to come home to see her mother so persuades Rupert to buy a local football team so her boyfriend, Feral, can play for them. This is a whole new ball game (pardon the pun) for Rupert and opens up so many cliche’s and opprtunities for Jilly Cooper to play with the and they make this book such a fun and fabulous read.

I loved being back in Rutshire, with so many familiar characters and lots of new ones who felt like family by the end of the book. Rupert is now sixty years old, and in his personal life anyway he has seemed to have calmed down, especially after Taggie’s diagnosis. However, buying the football team Searston Rovers opens up for some wonderful new characters and some brilliant one liners from Rupert. There was a lot of fun and inuendo around the WAGs, a few cliche’s that made me smile like the power srtuggle among them and the affectations of trying to be posh. There were a couple of players I really took to my heart like Griffy who has a nightmare wife and the young and naive Wifie. Recurring characters include Dora Beleveon and her boyfriend Paris and Etta and Valent Edwards who is his business parter at Searston Rovers, and of course there a whole list of adorable animals.

I adore Jilly Cooper’s writing, she is a masterful story teller with her plotting to keep the reader engrossed, the most wonderful characters and a brilliant mix of drama, darkness, light and a lot of wit. Apparently this book was inspired after a lunch with ex Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson, and I did wonder if any of the characters were loosly based on players he had worked with, and their wives. There was a lot of football terminology, but it was written in such a way that it didn’t bog me down, and as I previously mentioned a football club opens up all kinds of wonderful plot lines. There is plenty of drama, with business and personal rivalries, betrayals, affairs, broken hearts both romantic and profesional but there is also lots of fun, my favourite bring actor Paris Alverston teaching the football team how to dive and limp convincingly; if you watch football this will resonate with you.

I absolutely adored reading Tackle!, from its raunchy cover and title, to the wonderful characters, the brilliant one liners and exciting plot. It was raunchy, funny, sexy, and clever, all the things I love about Jilly Cooper’s novels, and I sincerely hope she has one more novel in her. This book was everything I expected and wanted, another romping success from the Queen of the bonk buster; I will forever be grateful to her for the gorgeous, charming love rat that is Rupert Campbell Black.