Last year I wrote two short picaresque comic novels, which I would humbly offer for your delectation. I guess they were somewhat inspired by the comic novels of Henry Fielding, hence the slightly racy covers, but the sexual references are no more explicit than you would find in one of his tales.
They feature the main character Matthew Kipper, a kind of Poirot/Jason King/TV chef mash-up with a troubling lack of morals and an even more worrying lack of intelligence who is kept vaguely on the straight and narrow by his clever and resourceful dog 451, (a bit of a canine cat burglar). Both books are available on Kindle Worldwide and the first also as a paperback. The second is being pushed to live in paperback now. (451 also doesn't turn up until the second volume, which is entirely understandable as my own kleptomaniac dog, Fuji, didn't come into my life until November 2019 and I was yet to learn of his wicked ways.)
A Kipper At Midnight
As I slide into the decrepitude of early retirement, I have found myself watching rather too many episodes of various TV detective series (eventually they all become one surreal, overwrought continuous story)
A Kipper at Midnight, is a parody of the classic country house mystery, with a number of guests, summoned to a vast and isolated manse. They will enjoy a weekend of social bonhomie that will climax with Lady Cynthia's Perversion ball, an event that is notorious internationally and attended by some of the more outre heads of state and politicos. All the normal archetypes are present and correct. The closeted but priapic Hollywood heartthrob, the Windbag old movie director with a terrible reputation with his crews and even more dubious filmography, the Kleptomaniac Heiress with a rich indulgent Father and the crack reporter with a hard nose for intrigue but no sensitivity at all when reporting on the most traumatic of World events.
The below-stairs world is meanwhile dominated by Timothy Blonde, a ludicrously over promoted minor footman who brings calamity and disaster to everything he touches, having once poisoned the entire VIP enclosure at Ascot by using a contaminated fish slice to dish out the poached salmon.
The usual shooting parties, bodies in greenhouses, haunted suits of armour, silver service breakfasts and duelling with red hot fire tongs are all featured. Matthew is under pressure to solve the ever-mounting body count before space in Lady Cynthia's ice house (for the corpses) runs out and to at least appear to be sticking the clues together. Unfortnately, in reality, has almost no clue. Will accident and fate intervene to make Matthew the hero of the hour or will he become a pariah in the Salons of Chelsea?
A Kipper to Die For.
In this mash-up of Bondian tropes and TV cookery show overindulgence, Matthew and his faithful companion 451 are summoned to a hollowed-out mountain in Switzerland where a mysterious someone, bent on changing World diets has arranged an uber-competitive international cooking competition.
Matthew is one of the judges who must witness the least successful cooks fed to the piranhas, whilst the judges find themselves served a delicate starter of some mysterious fish tempura with an umami taste that is hard to place.
Trapped in their rooms the judges and contestants are terrorised by a tall Somellier from hell with a razor-sharp corkscrew that meets out its own ruthless justice. When he is not indulging in his spandex and ferret fetish. he patrols the slopes of the mountain with a pack of killer huskies, who are constantly looking for their next snack. Will cunning 451 be able to befriend the homicidal hounds in order to save his master from his own idiotic risk-taking. Could a spirit of animal rebellion be in the air as all the non humans in the cast look set to appear on the menu?