One Dead Hen by Charlie Williams
The town of Mangel has always been a rough place, but rough turns to nightmarish when headless corpses begin piling up. The police are desperate for a suspect, and Royston Blake, the former pub doorman-turned-recluse is prime for the taking. He's hauled in for questioning, but to no avail: this is one crime Blake didn't commit. Yet the interrogation is enough to shake up his paranoid world. He realizes that, instead of hiding from the ills of the world, he should be fighting them. So begins Blake's quest to score the unlikeliest of jobs for a guy like him: becoming a copper in Mangel. Considering his violent past, everyone-cops, criminals, even his ex-girlfriend-tries to dissuade him. But Blake's a tenacious bloke, and what better way to convince the naysayers of his crime-fighting skills than to catch the butcher plaguing his town? As per usual, nothing goes according to plan in Blake's attempt to turn over a new leaf, leaving him to slog through plenty of blood and muck in the deliciously suspenseful fourth installment of Charlie Williams's darkly comic series.
Royston Blake is a boastful, aggressive, foul-mouthed, psychopathic hard-man of the utmost political incorrectness, a failure at everything he does but an indomitable believer in his own cleverness and sex appeal..Why then is he so enjoyable to read about? -The Times A welcome return for a daft anti-hero...Engrossing...Royston's ripe dialect and daft adventures are thoroughly entertaining. And while we laugh at the absurdity of the story, Williams does just enough to create the nagging worry that it isn't so unreal after all; that Royston is only as much of a caricature as the sensitive intellectual in the Hampstead novel or Jonathan Franzen's troubled Americans. The hideous town of Mangel, meanwhile, with its casual violence, unmanageable drinking and psychotic conservatism, offers up a vision of Britain that seems all too familiar...One of the most challenging social commentaries you are likely to read this year. AmazonEncore has rescued an excellent book. -The Guardian
Charlie Williams was born in Worcester, England, where he still lives with his wife and two children. His novels include Deadfolk, Booze and Burn, King of the Road, and Stairway to Hell, and have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, and Russian.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781935597506 |
| ISBN 10 | 1935597507 |
| Title | One Dead Hen |
| Author | Charlie Williams |
| Series | Mangel |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Amazon Publishing |
| Year published | 2011-08-09 |
| Number of pages | 278 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |