Reader Meet Author.

 I spent last night, actually the early hours of this morning, sipping good whisky and reading a novel. It was a novel I had written and put away for YEARS, convinced it was terrible. I read a hundred pages in one sitting, and I really enjoyed it. There were problems with it: the tone is a bit off, the punctuation is hilarious and even I think there are too many puns in it. ME! I KNOW! But the pace was relentless, the jokes were funny and the set-pieces really worked. I was incredibly surprised. It was genuinely much better than I had remembered it. 

I doubt there is a market for it: its a sixties spy spoof mixed with Greek mythology. But of course, Dan Brown - step this way into your personal bank vault. You may sniff the money. Mmm - goldy. 

My mother said it best when she said: "John, you can have a detective story and you can have the Greek Gods. You can't have both..." She'd be wise beyond her years if she weren't quite so old. 

But I have a 60's trench-coat wearing detective who also happens to be the Greek God of the forge. He has a French assistant on loan from the Surete, an attractive psychiatrist, twin circus performers called Mercredi and Dimanche, a Russian heavy called Pnin and an international assassin called The Blue Bayonet. There is a missing microfilm once belonging to Wilhelm Reich, car-chases, shoot outs, blow dart druggings, an attempted drowning, a peace March to Aldermaston broken up by a collision with a circus and a lot of cocktails. All in the first 100 pages. 

Quite a bit of it is set in or around Basingstoke too but your mileage may vary with that fact. 

I'll read the second 100 pages tonight and I'm genuinely looking forward to it. It's called "The Heavens Opened". I have found my audience and its me. That's a happy coincidence.