My first novel – a comedy thriller – is out in the wild with a bunch of proofreaders at the moment, so I thought I’d showcase a few random excerpts from it.
Here’s some content from The Nurse Diaries: The Life and Times of a Brighton Serial Killer, in no particular order.
If you’d like to order an advance copy, let me know and I’ll add your name to the list.
“Having just left Oxford University, most of the wannabe Chief Surgeon’s life has been spent either being buggered or buggering some other poor bugger. That’s the English public education system for you. The Establishment views such places as eminently suitable proving grounds for the nation’s future bell-ends: the Tory politicians, spies, diplomats, CEOs and senior Civil Service monkeys of this world, and he fits right in.”
“Inspired by the Dutch librarian Bart Huges who, in 1965, drilled a hole in his own head with a dentist’s drill as a publicity stunt, The Nurse tries it on herself one day while The Chief Surgeon’s down the pub. It fucking hurts.”
“Despite the fact it’s a lie, Hairy Dave is thankful to be called Hairy rather than ‘Baldy’. As nicknames go it could be so much worse. At sixteen he’d spent a particularly miserable year nicknamed ‘Biscuit’, thanks to some c*nt discovering his middle name is Gary. Gary Baldy, Garibaldi, Biscuit. God, that was a shit time. He was so heartily pissed off by the time he left school that he acquired another nickname. For a few dreadful weeks he was ‘Miserable Dave’, and he was one truly, madly, deeply pissed off individual. It’s the kind of thing that leaves scars.”
“In custody down Brighton nick, The Nurse sits up straight in an uncomfortable orange plastic chair and scowls at the shitty public service posters on the interview room walls. There’s fuck all else to amuse her while the silly c*nts run around in circles trying to decide what to do with the worst serial killer the city has ever spawned. The only one, for that matter. They’re not used to this kind of thing in right-on Brighton & Hove, where the locals are more likely to politely persuade you to attend a disabled lesbian performance arts event – or bum you – than actually murder you.”
“If The Nurse feels like sitting in the kitchen with her legs wide open, fanny in clear view of the whole of christendom, it’s her prerogative. If she fancies a lazy afternoon indoors flapping her beef curtains to the rhythm of a House music tune – or even throwing shapes with the blasted things – so be it. It’s her home and she can give her vag an airing any time she sees fit. The way she sits doesn’t make her any less of a lady.”
“One pack of blonde hair dye later and The Nurse is a new woman. You can’t change your shape that much. Her silhouette remains strong and tall, mannish and square. But she has a pert button nose peeping out from under the smooth fringe of a sleek blonde bob, much fuller lips, and she is totally expressionless as well as wrinkle-free. Fucking dreadful really, but she certainly looks nothing like her old self.”
“Luckily the house has a patio. Lavinia spends the rest of the day watching shite daytime telly in Steve’s front room while the body slowly stiffens then un-stiffens again. Then, after dusk, she takes up six of the flagstones in the garden, digs a neat hole underneath and posts Steve into it before replacing them so neatly you’d never know they’d been messed with in the first place.”
