Dying to Read
No longer available.
Dying to Read
by John Elliott
Publication Date: 21st April, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-907681-07-3
Paperback, 346 pages
‘The writer did it,’ claims Lacenaire, the talking parrot, but what does a bird know about who actually killed Augustin Cox, late of Bedfont, an in between area beloved of J. G. Ballard?
New to the capital, Geraldine Mycroft is in search of the real London. When she answers an employment ad for a Detective Agency, run by the eccentric Norman aka Norma Bones, she is determined to do things by the book. But which book? Will Queneau give the clue to the case, or will it be more Margery Allingham in this post-Ealing comedy murder mystery?
List of Chapters
1 A Naughty Deed in the Best of all Possible Worlds
2 Let’s Have Some Dialogue
3 The Bones Detective Agency
4 Self Expression
5 Antique Dogs and Shall We Dance
6 Is Love Like Music The Answer
7 Alone But Not Unhappy
8 Norma In Bed
9 As the Judge Said, Anyone Can Enter the Ritz Hotel
10 Etiquette for Beginners (1)
11 Sleuthing Twosome
12 Etiquette for Beginners (2)
13 Geraldine in Spankerland
14 In Which Nothing Much Happens, Or is it Simply In Between
15 Playtime
16 A Lady Client Withdraws
17 The Path I Tread
18 Confessions of Norma
19 A Boy’s Best Friend
20 Synchronicity
21 Missing You In Montevideo
22 Afternoon Ices and a Tap on the Head
23 Busy Busy
24 Suspect Mourners
25 Baby Talk
26 A Good Deed in the Worst of all Possible Worlds
27 Fare Well
28 Read Me
About The Author
John Elliott was born Glasgow 1938. As well as ‘Scotland making him’, he has lived in Spain and Paris and worked as an Assistant Film Editor, a night telephonist and in the Unemployment Benefit Service.
A persistent jazz and improvised music listener, he now resides in Twickenham.
What People Say
“It’s always such a joy to read a novel which is truly original. John Elliott’s book is fast paced and funny, the plot intrigues, and the characters — many so inventively named — leap off the page.”
Hilary Bonner
“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. Gut wrenching potboiler, postmodern farce, metafictional improvisation, genuinely wicked satire, it perfectly fuses hot momentum with cool profundity, making extensive use of slick dialogue and puzzling plot devices. A major delight to read and savour!”
Rhys Hughes
Online Reviews