- Hardcover: 300 pages
- Publisher: Llama Press (1 Oct 2008)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0956005101
- ISBN-13: 978-0956005106
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 845,680 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
"Very funny...beautiful use of the English language ...a very cheeky, very naughty book." BBC Radio Cornwall, 2009 "A punchy black comedy...erudite daftness of the first order! Ben Elton meets Tom Sharpe, with a smidgen of Will Self into the bargain." Philomena Muinzer, 2009 "A fast-moving mystery-horror-comic spoof. Crude at times, elegant at others, Tanner successfully bridges the gap. So good I read it three times!" Amazon, 2009 Spoof spiritualist Gideon Pee's blinding ineptitude at predicting the future is seriously impeding his stage career. Extrasensory powers remain maddeningly elusive - until one day he gets the vision he's always hankered after. And it's a biggy... An unannounced visit from an old college chum might just shake things up a bit for Felix Abercrombie, a canal-dwelling youth worker nudging forty. For Frankie (a ham-fisted conjuror struggling to assuage a hazardously imminent mid-life crisis)arrives bearing baggage of unspeakable horror. Conveniently, Felix's incomprehensible infatuation for flying widens the possibilities for disposing of his visitor's putrefying bundle. His tranquillity becomes further assaulted by the appearance of Frankie's oddball cohort, Salvatore and Giuseppe, and soon the fatuous four find themselves lumbered with a second grizzly cadaver they hadn't bargained for. If they didn't know better they might suspect events had been preordained, or at any rate coaxed along by someone with an oddly cynical axe to grind... Clues to what appears to be two motiveless gothic murders dribble in to the police at a snail's pace, but it's all too much for DI Toogood and his trivia-sponge minion, Sgt Chanter. Perhaps upwardly-mobile PC Dring can figure it all out?
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fabulous book!,
By
This review is from: Life on Mars? A Catinel's Chance (Paperback)
This book is a pleasure to read and very, very funny. It is full of beautifully drawn comic characters and the clever use of language will have you laughing out loud. You become drawn into this exaggerated and yet completely plausible and recognisable parallel England and the story sweeps you along at breakneck speed. One of those books where you wish it didn't end.
If you're a fan of Carl Hiaasen, this is one for you.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
So good I read it three times!,
By G H Francis (London) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Life on Mars?: A Catinel's Chance (Hardcover)
I first read this book on a long plane journey from the Caribbean a few weeks ago and have been unable to resist re-reading it another twice since.
Thankfully, Mark Tanner (who is also a concert pianist) does not fall into the trap of lacing every sentence with musical references, though there are some. However, they are used sparingly and always to add to the colourful drama which unfolds with bizarre ease. The plot is a fast-moving mystery-horror-comic spoof and is not easily pigeon-holed. The language is erudite and beautifully masterful. Tanner threads more than a few puns throughout the 400 pages using the English language in an interestingly juxtapositional style - a cross between Evelyn Waugh and Ben Elton. Crude at times, elegant at others, Tanner successfully bridges the gap. The characters are portrayed with careful detail and their antics described with colourful imagery. The plot, though dark and often outrageous is full of wit and brazen humour. It involves two murders, one unwitting and another pre-meditated followed by the ridiculous attempts by the main characters to defy and outwit the local police team in a process of body concealment and aeronautical corpse-dumping. Dangerous wild animals, clairvoyance, mind-reading and Italian private investigators all play their part along with many others too numerous to mention. If you don't enjoy humour of a highly ridiculous fashion, puns aplenty, horrific murder scenes and lads-speak, you will definitely not enjoy this book, however, if you do, you'll love it.
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