Strange Ways

This is a love story, narrated by one of the protagonists, Henry Blain, a prison cook. Blain, a sixty-something Liverpudlian, is an unreconstructed male, Shakespeare lover, adulterator of food, and a murderer. The prison he works in is called Strangeways. The love affair, with a 50-year-old reporter with the ANGLICAN TRIBUNE, takes place against the background of the 1990 seige. At first vilified by the prisoners ¿ who understandably blame him for the quality of the food they¿re served and devastate his garden with missiles flung from the roof ¿ Blain later becomes their hero. Along the way we learn he has murdered two of his wives, one mistress and a blackmailer, and buried them in the garden. A meditation on food and digestion, with a large measure of sex and fantasy and a handful of murders thrown in, this is an anarchic, funny, irreverent novel.