Contemporary comedy thriller · 2012
Trouble Cross
Thomas Robel, a newly established insurance investigator.
Pratt, Pratt, Wally & Pratt are a newly formed firm of insurance investigators, although only one person works there, Thomas Robel. He gets his first case from a mysterious American woman who appears unannounced at the office. The simple case of embezzlement is not all it seems, and Tommy Trouble is drawn into a web of lies, kidnap and clown murder. In prison for a crime he didn’t commit, can he escape and extricate himself from the sticky web of deceit?
This is my full comedy thriller, with Thomas Robel’s back story and the James Bond spoof he writes woven through it. I have since split it up after some constructive comments from readers – see Pratt, Pratt, Wally & Pratt Investigate, T is For… and Doctor, Oh No! Personally, I prefer it all together, but maybe I have a more complex brain than others.
The story behind the book
Five years later I tried again, after I lost my job due to redundancy. At my previous office I had had a little success at making people laugh with short spoofs about people in the office. This had led to my only ever commission – unpaid though it was. A colleague told me her boyfriend was a James Bond fan and asked me to write a spoof for her to give to him. This led to the short comedic story ‘Doctor, Oh No!’ which they were so pleased with that they made a feature of it by sticking the pages up on their spare bedroom wall. After I lost my job I thought, why not write a comedy thriller. It took four years, by which time I had moved to London to find a job. This time the manuscript was legible and double lined spaced. It was no longer possible to write direct to publishers, you had to attract the interest of a literary agent. After several rejections this too went into a drawer. This was titled Tommy Trouble at the time.
