Archer’s Goon was published by Methuen in 1984. The novel begins with thirteen-year-old Howard Sykes coming home from school to find an enormous, shaven-headed man sitting in the kitchen — the “Goon” of the title, sent by someone called Archer to collect the 2,000 words that Howard’s father, Doddos Sykes, writes every quarter. Doddos is a mild-mannered English lecturer who has been writing these words for years without knowing why or for whom.
The revelation that unfolds — gradually, through a series of discoveries each of which overturns everything previously understood — is that the town is secretly controlled by seven wizard siblings: Doddos, Torquil, Hathaway, Dillian, Shine, Venturus, and Erskine. Each controls a different aspect of civic life (transport, electricity, crime, music, education, the future, farming). They cannot leave the town, and they have been fighting among themselves for decades.
Jones’s plot construction is at its most virtuosic here. Every chapter reveals something new that recontextualizes everything before it. The identity of Archer, the purpose of the 2,000 words, the reason the wizards can’t leave, and — most devastatingly — the true identity of the Goon himself are all surprises that Jones plants in plain sight and reveals at precisely the right moment.
The novel also works as a domestic comedy: the Sykes family — father, mother, Howard, and his awful little sister Awful (her actual name is Anthea, but everyone calls her Awful) — are one of Jones’s most convincing family portraits. Their interactions are warm, funny, and recognizably real.
Collecting Archer’s Goon
First edition (Methuen, London, 1984): Hardcover, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $80–$200
- Very good/very good: $30–$80