I think anyone's life could benefit from a book with a title such as this, in fact they probably don't come much better, The Herring Seller's Apprentice must
have taken some imagination on the part of L.C.Tyler so hats off to
him.Then you see that he's actually the Chief Executive of the Royal
College of Paediatrics and Child Health and that explains it all.
Those
of us who work in this field spend many hours dreaming up weird book
titles and whacky ideas to compensate and one day I'll tell you all
about Stiff Sisters (business patent pending) which was our idea at work in an idle moment for a
women's funeral business, for women and run by women, (there might be a
book in that now I think about it) but it'll have to wait for another
day.
Meanwhile Ethelred Tressider, apart from the worry of his name, is "a
crime writer with problems", not least his agent Elsie Thirkettle.Elsie
hates writers and she hates literature so things are not going full
steam ahead for poor old Ethelred, in fact I can't resist it, they are
very unready...sorry, it had to be done and out of the way early on.
"In the beginning writing was pure pleasure. It was Elsie who taught me that, with only a little effort, it could just as easily be mindless drudgery"
Soon
enough Ethelred is tangled up in a real life mystery of his own as his
ex-wife disappears (can you blame her?) and there follows a very
entertaining and funny book as everything is untangled and revealed.
This is one of those light-hearted amusing books that offers pure
pleasure in the reading of and L.C.Tyler has a wonderously funny turn of phrase which had me chuckling constantly.
It's also one of those published via the Macmillan New Writing scheme
about which there was such a big hue and cry when it was first unveiled
and now you wonder what all the fuss was about. Good books given a
chance in the ever-competitive world of publishing and this one
certainly deserves its moment but with one tiny quibble.I've got to be honest, at £14.99 in hardback you might want to make that a library lending moment or perhaps an elsewhere moment where I see it is going considerably cheaper.
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