A Ghost of a Chance

Rating:
Summary: The triumph of the Difficult Second Novel!
Review: Everybody knows about the difficult second album and the same applies to novels. This was the follow-up to the much praised Guttridge debut "No Laughing Matter". Guttridge's agent was keen for him to stop globetrotting (NLM was set in Montreal, Edinburgh and Los Angeles) and set his characters in a specific place in England. His characters being love-lorn, yoga obsessive journalist Nick Madrid and Bridget "Bitch of the Broadsheets" Frost. So he looked out of his window at the Sussex Downs in England with its view of, among other things, a house once owned by Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page which had a black magic room, and came up with a novel about New Age meets Old Religion (ie: satanism). The result is a hoot. But then I would say that as I AM Guttridge (no this is not the 'I am Spartacus' line - I really am the author) and I'm so pleased to see this book out in a US edition. Happy reading.

Rating:
Summary: musing satirical take on the British who-done-it
Review: Weekly editor Bridget Frost commissioned reporter Nick Madrid to write a story after spending a night being haunted near Ashcombe Manor in Sussex; Nick figures that the modern day druids, loonies and a Priest of Isis, etc. haunt the manor converted into a New Age Conference Centre. Still Nick visits the nearby graveyard to spend a night visiting the dead except one of the dead is hanging upside down from a tree.

He calls the police who like everyone else wonder what is so special about finding a dead person in a graveyard; Nick also faces the wrath of the New Age Conference Center's Moira Cassidy who warned him to stay away. As DI Bradley investigates murder, he suspects Nick. Knowing that this is NO LAUGHING MATTER, the reporter makes his own inquiries into all the believers at the New Age Conference Center especially those who frequent the cemetery wearing animal heads and a nearby filming of the Great Beast, the story of the infamous spiritualist Crowley.

Although the plot is loose and all over the place, Peter Guttridge provides an amusing satirical take on the British who-done-it. The amusing story line has Nick struggling with his inquiries that makes him believe that he does not have A GHOST OF A CHANCE to solve the case. Everyone acts weird and suspicious, but no one seems to have motive to turn the victim into a tarot card poster boy of the Hanging Tree. Nick provides the little focus there is as he gets personal yoga lessons that leave him red in the face (and elsewhere) while investigating. Fans of wacky mysteries will enjoy this humorous tale.

Harriet Klausner