Dying to Read – Feltham, here we come!

And now for something completely different! In keeping with the Chômu mission to bring you works that are of the highest quality and (maybe not just) a little unusual, we are very pleased to present a murder mystery that is also something of a literary conundrum. Dying to Read, by John Elliott, is a crime thriller as comic as it is gritty. Its evocation of its chosen milieu (“Heathrow perimeterville”) is masterly, the dialogue and characters are up-to-the-minute, and the text delights in the small, real and very odd details of so-called ordinary life. But beneath the surface it takes as much from the European tradition of existentialism as the Wodehouse and Ealing Studios tradition of British comedy. Get on the case, by ordering a copy here.

To quote the ever quotable Rhy Hughes:

It’s always a particular pleasure to chance upon a cunning, erudite, stylish, inventive, unique but relatively obscure writer who, perhaps because of dissatisfaction with their own obscurity, makes a sudden wild attempt to break into the limelight, to write something more commercial, but who actually fails to ’sell out’ because they simply have too much integrity and talent. The result is often a curious hybrid between the popular and the avant garde, the low and the highbrow, with each component doing its best to sabotage its opposite. John Elliott’s brilliant novel falls squarely into this category, but the self-sabotage becomes symbiosis. Dying to Read is a marvellous slide along the high tension wires of a vast imagination with nothing but a frayed belt to keep you above the intertextual chasm.

Prize Draw for uniquely inscribed copy of Dying to Read

We would also like to announce a prize draw for a signed and uniquely inscribed copy of Dying to Read. To be entered for this draw, please sign up to our mailing list and send an e-mail with the subject heading ‘Dying to Read’ to info at chomupress dot com. If you are already on our mailing list, naturally there is no need to sign up again – simply send an e-mail with the ‘Dying to Read’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 12th of May.