A quirky thriller and semi-humorous shaggy dog tale from an author best known for his comic TV scripts, this proves wonderful entertainment. Jacky, a somewhat failure of a person and a pedantic translator, meets a beautiful girl in a bar, but messes things up badly once she comes to his flat. No surprise, then. When he later becomes a suspect in her murder, although no body is actually discovered, he draws a tenuous connection with a mysterious book she owned and some of the more eccentric writers he has interfaced with on in his day job and is launched on a madcap adventure to Paris to both prove his innocence and elucidate the book in an enigmatic language unknown to man, wikth a bow to Jorge Luis Borges, and the woman's notebook of rock and roll clippings (yes, it does make sense eventually!). Add to the crazy mix an old school type publisher, relentless cops on his trail, a strange museum, guns, perilous roof-top escapes and all sorts of mishaps and you have a wild trip, where the jokes linger and hapless narrator is a bewildered figure of fun and fascination.
Jacky is a translator. He is a bit of an eccentric. And he can't quite understand why the enigmatic and beautiful girl at the bar wants to talk to him. Even more perplexing is the tatty-looking book she carries with her but won't let him touch. Written in an untranslatable language - even for him - it contains, quite impossibly, what seem to be photographs of her murder. When she disappears hours later and the book comes into his custody, the suspicion falls on him. Accused of her murder, Jacky must find a way to decipher the untranslatable book she has left behind. Racing through Paris in pursuit of the truth and the missing girl, he must track her down with nothing but an unwavering determination and the assistance of the world's most annoying man. The Mule is a wholly original, comical thriller filled with eccentric characters, sporadic violence and other peculiarities. Weaving a tale of intrigue, betrayal and romance, this is the bizarre story of the world's most enigmatic book.
'David Quantick has a medical condition whereby he literally cannot be unfunny.' -- Caitlin Moran
'Unfolds like The Da Vinci Code, only with a sense of humour and better grammar.' Independent
Author
About David Quantick
David Quantick is a BAFTA award-winning comedy writer and bestselling author of the bestselling series of Grumpy Old Men books. Dangerous Book for Middle-Aged Men is edited by the great Jon Naismith (producer of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue and much award-winning radio and TV). Both are certainly not pushing middle-age and they are certainly not into cooking ... apart from truffles ... which are really, really expensive ... or sports cars ... and neither has a comb-over ... yet.
