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(More customer reviews)Bridget, Frank and Nick fly from England to Montreal to cover the Just for Laughs Festival for different newspapers. While Nick is tied up in a yoga position, he sees a young woman flash past his hotel room window. He concludes she is a jumper who he later learns was Cissy Parker, a movie starlet. The police rule it an accidental death due to drugs, but Nick has doubts when Frank mentions he heard a man screaming at a woman on the eighteenth floor.
A reporter Julie informs Nick that she took pictures at a celebrity bash that Cissy attended. The starlet offered her a lot of money to buy the negatives, but Julie refused. One of the photos shows Cissy with an unidentified man. When Nick learns the victim was pregnant he concludes she was pushed. Not realizing the danger he causes to himself, his friends and others associated with Cissy on both sides of the ocean, Nick keeps digging as more homicides occurs.
In between murder, beatings, chases, air travel, NO LAUGHING MATTER contains amusing comical scenes, but the prime story line is the protagonist is drawn into a homicide investigation that he prefers to avoid. Once he begins making inquiries, he continues to the bitter end, which he realizes could be his death, in an effort too learn the identity of the mastermind behind the killings and the beatings he suffered. Talented Peter Guttridge provides a journalistic investigative mystery that stars a fine cast worthy of sequels.
Harriet Klausner
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"This sparkling debut fires volleys of one-liners . . . Romping good stuff."—Daily Mail
"An original and highly readable debut for journalist-turned-gumshoe, Nick Madrid. But a word of warning: never let this man house-sit if you value your pets."—Lynne Truss
"Made me laugh out loud and wince in sympathy at both the violence and the humiliation meted out to the narrator . . . enormous fun."—Val McDermid
Tom Sharpe meets Raymond Chandler in No Laughing Matter, a humorous and brilliant debut that will keep readers on a knife's edge of suspense until the bittersweet end.
When a naked woman flashes past Nick Madrid's hotel window, it's quite a surprise. For Nick's room is on the 14th floor, and the hotel doesn't have an outside elevator. The management is horrified when Cissie Parker lands in the swimming pool—not only is she killed, but she makes a real mess of the shallow end.
In Montreal for the Just For Laughs festival, Nick, a journalist who prefers practicing yoga to interviewing the stars, turns gumshoe to answer the question: did she fall or was she pushed? The trail leads first to the mean streets of Edinburgh and then to Los Angeles, where the truth lurks among the dark secrets of Hollywood.
Peter Guttridge is the Royal Literary Fund writing fellow at Southampton University and teaches creative writing. Between 1998 and 2002, he was the director of the Brighton Literature Festival. Since 1998, he has been the mystery reviewer for The Observer, one of Britain's most prestigious Sunday newspapers. He lives in Sussex on the edge of the South Downs National Park.
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