The End of My Tether [Paperback]

'A tour de force. Funny, challenging, provocative, harrowing. Above all else, angry.'

'A work of daunting ambition and massive imagination.Often bizarre, gleefully irreverent, grotesque or delightful.'

A myth of England with beasts, songs and treachery, shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Prize, 2002; Inspector Kernan is investigating the murder of Bernard Tench, a whistleblowing scientist who knew too much about BSE. As Kernan uncovers links between sleaze and slaughter, between pollution and police, his new sidekick Diana Hunter realizes that her eccentric inspector is no ordinary man. Kernan uses the songs, folklore and superstitions of his Loamshire patch for guidance, enlisting animal informants and supernatural allies against the sinister Superintendent Goodman to uncover what's rotten in the state of England. Exploring the myths and occult powers of England, The End Of My Tether rediscovers the magic in our own backyard.

It's listed under Crime Fiction, but it's only that in the sense that Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow or Daniel Pennac's novels are crime fiction - more like a cross between Angela Carter and Tristram Shandy, The Magic Flute with mad cows and Englishmen, a topsy-turvy Almodovan wrecking-job on the English Whodunnit. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Neil Astley is the founder and editor of Bloodaxe Books. He has published several volumes of poetry himself, and lives in Northumberland.