The Second Man and Win Some, Lose Some feature PI Mike Grady, with whom readers of the Blackpool novels will be familiar. In the Second Man, Grady is offered a simple job, delivering a bundle of cash in return for a gambling IOU. Seems an easy assignment, until murder queers the pitch. In the second story Grady is asked to save an attractive woman from the unwelcome advances of her boss. Grady finds nothing is as simple as it looked. The Spider introduces downmarket PI Rick Mason. An old flame asks him to help put her new partner on the straight and narrow and keep him out of jail. In Sam Cooke, PI Pete Mallone finds he is out of his depth when he witnesses a killing and ends up on the wrong side of the law. Chrome tells a story of regret, old acquaintance and an unsolved puzzle.
When he walked into my office it took me a while to recognise Charles Foster.Then I twigged. He was a fracking ambulance chaser. I thought the no-win no-fee lawyer was handing me an easy job for good money. All I had to do was carry out basic background checks on a few prospective clients.I found he'd left out a few things. He didn't tell me Paul Spencer was dead. He didn't tell me I was Paul's stand-in. He didn't tell me about Jessica's long legs. He didn't tell me he was going to disappear. To be fair, he didn't know that himself. Noir meets pulp meets fracking, greed and corruption in the fourth in Alan Tootill's series of Blackpool Novels, featuring PI Mike Grady.
The frackers promised jobs. Promised to turn Blackpool into a new super-rich gold rush town. They brought jobs all right. They brought in foreign workers who sent their money back to their loving wives and families in France and Eastern Europe while they shot up heroin and snorted cocaine at the end of the day’s work. For the rest of Blackpool, before the problems started, it was business as usual. But then people started getting wise. The stories started emerging how the fracking companies, purpose-built venture frackploitation capital firms, were wrecking the land and air. The profit from raping the countryside was going abroad to their US, Australian and Cayman Island and other offshore backers. The only money that stayed in the country went into corrupt politicians’ pockets. Of course back in the early 2010s no-one knew this was coming. But the signs were there. The environmentalists raged on about earthquakes, water pollution and health problems. Most folk didn’t listen. The antis were a ragbag lot, and as often as not were squabbling between themselves. When one of them died in front of a fracking fluid lorry she was blamed for her own stupidity. Now the Fylde is ruined forever, and everyone’s wise after the event.
Bryan Gibson grew up watching football, wishing he was on the pitch rather than in the crowd. After securing a trial at a well-known club, he was thrilled to be called into the manager’s office only to be asked ‘What would you do if you weren’t to play football?’ Part fact, part fiction and inspired by the author’s calamitous attempts to become a professional, Football’s Tallest Tales spans every aspect of The Beautiful Game and tells of the many fascinating characters he met along the way. The book includes a madcap reinvention of soccer that introduces readers to such fictional legends of football as Stanley Accrington, Betty Skyrocket and over-zealous supporter Hyam Keenbritches. Covering every aspect of the game, including the invention of Dragon Grease (an indispensable aid), the gestation of women’s football, the demise of the annual Goalkeepers’ Convention and other stories, Football’s Tallest Tales also homes in on such farcical real-life muses as the cricket teacher who morphed into the umpire Dickie Bird, Herman the German of Bayern Munich FC, and Sandy Soot, football angel turned chimney sweep who showed the author how to take the perfect penalty kick. Featuring many present-day football clubs, players and comical events as well as explaining such mysteries as why Barnsley FC supporters are all poets, playwrights and performers. A totally original super-spoof – the ideal gift for any football fan. Reviews ‘The runaway best-seller that upped and ran away’– Radio Water Bottle ‘If you want to know how footballs came to be round not square this book contains all you need to know’– Anon ‘Ground breaking’– Groundsman’s Weekly ‘A perfect cure for football fever’– Society of the Wet Sponge
Steve Latham left Blackpool with a bullet hole in his arm and a determination never to return. He ran to the capital, changed his name, became a PI and never looked back. Now, twenty years later, a chance encounter in a London street leads to a plea for him to come back to the seaside town, to look for a missing girl. A daughter he never knew he had. Steve's return rakes up the past, revealing a tale of drugs, deception, long-held grudges and murder. Alan Tootill's second Blackpool Novel continues his fictional vision of a town fuelled by crime, greed and lust.
