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Shaking Hands with the Devil

Bryan J. Mason

‘WE ARE ON THIS CASE LIKE A BONER FIDO BLOODHOUND...
AND MY MEN ARE BARKING AT THE LEASH'

In this darkly comic novel, Clifton Gentle is an ordinary man without much to distinguish him. Not much, that is, apart from being a serial killer who is leaving bits of his young male victims scattered around North London
.
DCI Dave Hicks is the larger than life policeman determined to catch him. His attempts to find ‘the nutter' through a combination of spoonerisms, personal abuse and a belief that something will turn up don't go well. All that turns up are yet more body parts.

In a sleazy London dogged by growing squalor and an IRA bombing campaign in the last days of Margaret Thatcher's premiership, the gruesome murders spur an over-the-top media and merchandising frenzy.

The hunt becomes an increasingly personal one and a race against the clock as Clifton, Dave Hicks, a would-be victim, and a copycat killer each try to uncover what - or who - they hold responsible for their own problems.

Paperback  |   Hardback   |   eBook

ABOUT BRYAN J. MASON


Bryan J Mason wrote this novel in London in the late 1980s, but reluctantly put it away in a drawer after his agent narrowly failed to get it published. He dug it out every ten years or so and each time he did was surprised to find that he enjoyed reading it and still found it funny. At last, he decided to try and get it published, after making some changes, including firmly placing the action in the late ʼ80s and early ʼ90s for today's reader.

He has worked as a brush salesman and rent collector, made sound effects for BBC Radio and been a tax inspector and occasional actor. He writes regular theatre reviews for StageTalk Magazine.

Shaking Hands with the Devil is Bryan's first novel. He is currently working on one featuring a Jewish detective investigating a series of serial killings in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, called An old Tin Can.
He lives in Bristol with his wife and has two children in their twenties