Corpse in the Garden of Perfect Brightness
The perfect quirky nostalgic crime read – a tale of steam trains, giant squid, missing screenplays, missing mothers and a quest for the truth, from the inimitable Malcolm Pryce
It’s the winter of 1948. The four great railway companies have just been nationalised and Jack Wenlock – the last of a fabled cadre of railway detectives – is thrown out onto the street.
Penniless, with new bride Jenny to support, and hiding from a murderous organisation called Room 42, Jack’s prospects look bleak.
But then a letter arrives from a mysterious Cornish Countess revealing that Jack’s mother – long believed to be dead – may have survived a shipwreck off the coast of Java. Seizing the opportunity to track down his only remaining family member, Jack and Jenny board a boat heading East.
The trail takes them to a run-down Siamese hotel where a motley assortment of drifters has washed up. Here a spy, an assassin, a deserter, an old soldier and a fading Hollywood movie star all await the arrival of a missing part for a flying boat and a journey that will take them into the realm of myth.
But if Jack is ever to see his mother again, he has to stop them…
Malcolm Pryce was born in the UK and has spent much of his life working and travelling abroad. He has been a BMW assemblyline worker, a hotel washer-up, a deck hand on a yacht sailing the South Seas, an advertising copywriter and the world’s worst aluminium salesman. He is the author of the bestselling ‘Aberystwyth’ novels. He lives in Oxford.
@exogamist malcolmpryce.com