- Book info
- Sample
- Media
- Author updates
- Lists
Synopsis
THE ABSURD CRIME FICTION PARODY BY FICTIONAL AUTHOR 'MARTIN FISHBACK' - AS SEEN ON BBC TWO
'What's better than a good crime novel? I'll tell you - a spoof crime novel, by the absurdly funny and clever Fergus Craig'
MIRANDA HART
'We all need more laughs like this'
AISLING BEA
Exeter: a city in decline, East Devon's capital of crime.
Detective Roger LeCarre: a man on a quest to rid the world of crime (starting with Devon and Cornwall and then working outwards) so he can concentrate on his watercolours.
LeCarre runs 10km a day but probably burns more calories shaking his head at what has become of his city. Now Exeter is set to become the UK Capital of Culture and the ambitious Lord Mayor wants to turn things around. But when a young man's (dead) body is found in the centre of town, things get murky.
Detective Roger LeCarre is a character never seen before in modern fiction - a tough but troubled detective with a drink problem and a marriage in trouble. Can he find out who killed the young man, save the city and change his energy provider before the new more expensive tariff kicks in?
Filled with drama, eroticism and very specific Wikipedia-sourced information on Devon, Once Upon A Crime is a thriller that takes itself very seriously and that should not, on any account, actually be taken seriously.
Release date: October 19, 2021
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Print pages: 272
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
Reader buzz
Author updates
Once Upon a Crime
Fergus Craig
Five years.
That’s how long it had been since Detective Mick Lamb had been declared dead. LeCarre had argued with the socalled doctors at the hospital.
‘Mick Lamb does a lot of things but he doesn’t die. He just doesn’t die.’
Mick’s vital organs or what was left of them had said otherwise. Not that they could say anything – they just lay there in Lamb’s lifeless body, refusing to function like teenagers refusing to clean their rooms.
‘You’re like teenagers refusing to clean your rooms!’ LeCarre had yelled at Lamb’s heart, lungs, kidneys and liver.
The situation was all too familiar. Lamb was LeCarre’s fifth partner to die. Each had met their fate in the line of duty, serving the Devon and Cornwall police force. They all knew what they’d signed up for. When you volunteered to put yourself between the people of Devon and Cornwall and that unstoppable force – crime – there was always the chance you could end up taking a bullet, or in Lamb’s case, nine bullets and a moving car.
It hadn’t taken LeCarre long to find Lamb’s killer: Scott Drink, just a kid caught up in the never-ending gang war between the two counties that straddled the River Tamar, a river that, try as it might, could never keep the peace because it was just a body of water, just a stretch of H2O, not enough to hold back centuries of grudge and counter-grudge.
The Devon and Cornwall police force were supposed to be neutral – Devon and Cornwall – but Lamb had been seen as a Devon loyalist and when he put the Cornish king pin Tristan Trestle behind bars, the boys from Kernow (which is Cornish for Cornwall) wanted revenge. Drink was just a foot soldier earning his stripes. They handed him a pasty and a gun and sent him across the Tamar Bridge to end Lamb’s life and effectively his own. Of course, he’d probably be out of prison within a few years for ‘good behaviour’. That was how the ‘justice’ system seemed to work these days. LeCarre often put words like ‘justice’ and ‘good behaviour’ in quotation marks. It was a clever way of letting people know what he really thought.
LeCarre had always blamed himself for not being there when Drink had taken out Lamb. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ everyone had told him, with their eyes. If it had happened any other night of the week (except maybe a Tuesday, which was pub quiz night) then LeCarre would have probably been right by Lamb’s side – busting open a crack house in Bideford, chasing a suspect down the A377 towards Barnstaple or just setting the world to rights in the Crown and Goose. That was the life they led. But it happened on a Friday night and Friday night was the night LeCarre always took his wife Carrie for a meal at Zizzi’s on Gandy Street. They both loved the way the pizza came out on wooden boards and that was fine – it was a very original touch – but maybe if they hadn’t loved it quite so much then LeCarre would have been there that night. Maybe he would have taken those nine bullets himself, or at least three or four of them.
Carrie suspected that LeCarre blamed not just himself but her too. He always said he didn’t, but how else could she explain the way he seemed to have looked at her differently ever since his Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge had rung that night in Zizzi’s and Sgt Pete DeFreitus had told him to get to the Royal Devon and Exeter in double time? He hadn’t even kissed her goodbye. He’d just finished his calzone and left.
LeCarre was married to the force and Carrie knew it. I mean, he was married to her, too. In a legal sense he wasn’t married to the force at all: a police force is an organisation and you can’t marry an organisation. You could marry every member of an organisation but that would be polygamy, which is illegal under UK law, and it was LeCarre’s job to uphold the law. So he wouldn’t be doing that and he wouldn’t want to, anyway. It would be completely impractical and not even desirable – most of the people on the force were men and although LeCarre didn’t have a problem with homosexuality (he’d gotten over that around 2005), he wasn’t gay himself and had no interest in marrying one man, let alone five thousand of them. But, metaphorically, LeCarre was married to the force and Carrie was destined always to play second fiddle.
LeCarre didn’t blame Carrie but if he were honest with himself, he’d have to admit he’d changed since Lamb had died. Before that night LeCarre was just another cop in his early forties who’d had a few partners die. Now he saw the world for what it was – a diseased sphere, hurtling aimlessly through space, infected with crime. That night LeCarre had declared it his mission to rid the whole planet of crime, starting with Devon and Cornwall and then gradually working his way outwards. Once he’d done that, then he’d have time for Carrie and their daughter Destiny.
LeCarre spoke to the grave, his stubble gently blowing in the morning breeze.
‘How’s it going down there, champ?’
No reply. To be fair, it would have been weird if there had been, considering the circumstances. LeCarre didn’t know if there was an afterlife but he hoped there was. He liked to picture Lamb popping down to hell from time to time to make a few arrests for the big man upstairs. Technically, it would be a pointless exercise as they’d already be suffering the worst possible punishment, but it was a nice image, all the same.
Five years.
Five years since the funeral. The emotional strength LeCarre had had to find to deliver the eulogy was still fresh in his mind, as was the standard of the catering, which had left a lot to be desired. He’d written a stern Yelp review that night, whisky in hand, tears streaming down his face like sweat down an athlete’s back.
He’d tried to stay in touch with Anne but it was difficult. Looking in her face, LeCarre could only see Lamb and the nights they’d spent together as a foursome, Mick and Roger talking about politics and sport, Anne and Carrie gossiping about soaps and clothes and perfume and stuff like that. Anne had pleaded with him to look out for Junior, Lamb’s son, and LeCarre did his best to do just that. Boys needed a strong male role model, especially in a tough city like Exeter.
The way he was going, LeCarre was headed for Detective Terry Gower’s record of twenty-two dead partners. That was a record you didn’t want to break. He’d sworn never to let another partner die, and so far he’d kept his word.
Detective LeBron Jax was next in line. The boys down the nick had a sweepstake on how long he’d survive – just a bit of harmless fun. No one had thought he’d make five years, but Jax was still standing, all 6 feet 2 inches of him. Or 188 centimetres, as our friends in Europe might say. Jax was black – not that LeCarre had ever noticed. LeCarre simply didn’t see colour – he only saw humanity, and Jax had humanity in abundance.
LeCarre had now spent even longer with Jax than he had with Lamb and in that time they’d grown close. Jax had introduced LeCarre to rap music and LeCarre had introduced Jax to the work of Hilary Mantel. In the five orbits of the sun they’d been partners in stopping crime, they’d been through so much together: Brexit, the Atkins Diet, ten to fifteen inquiries into suspicious deaths in custody. Roger was the best man at Jax’s wedding and he was still the best man on the Devon and Cornwall police force, of that there was no doubt, no matter what his superiors said in their so-called reports.
‘Strange times, Lamby, strange times. We could do with a guy like you on the force.’
The city was in the midst of a crime wave, the likes of which it had never seen, not since at least 2014, anyway. Crime was like a virus spreading through the streets. Everywhere you looked was crime. Out of the corner of his eye right now LeCarre could literally see a woman being mugged, but this was his annual moment with Lamb and he’d vowed never to let anything get in the way of it, so he let the mugging pass. She’d probably be able to get everything back on her insurance – that’s if she was smart enough to get an all-inclusive contents insurance. With the range of price comparison websites available to the consumer these days there really wasn’t any excuse for not getting good cover.
LeCarre pulled the zip up on his expensive leather jacket, like a forensic pulling up a zip on a body bag. The wind was picking up. The wind of change? Probably not. Nothing ever seemed to change around here. Not really. LeCarre kept putting criminals away, but new ones just came to take their place. Oh well. At least they kept him in work. What if he ever did achieve his ultimate goal of a crime-free universe? What would he do then? Paint, probably. Watercolours. He was an incredibly deep and intelligent man. Think Stephen Fry, but cool and tough and not the voice of the Harry Potter audiobooks.
His phone rang. Chang.
‘LeCarre.’
‘There’s a body in the city centre, by St Pancras Church. Get there now and the case is yours.’
‘I’m there.’
LeCarre put his Huawei P30 Pro 256 gigabyte smart-phone back into his jacket pocket, the slickly designed curved screen nestling against his garment’s lining. He’d upgraded from Samsung to the Chinese device six months ago and had found the process surprisingly simple. If only everything was so easy. LeCarre took out a small green sachet. Time to do the ritual. He ripped the corner with his masculine teeth and poured its contents on top of the grave.
‘Take care, Lamby. Take care.’
LeCarre turned and walked back to his car, the smell of mint sauce hanging in the breeze.
A pair of eyes looked into a rear-view mirror. The eyes belonged to Detective Roger LeCarre, as did the mirror, as did the Kia Ceed in which they both sat. He didn’t look bad for a forty-five-year-old on no sleep. Some wrinkles, some greying at the temples, a little alcohol damage to the nose, nothing to worry about. To LeCarre’s disgust, some of the younger lads on the squad were starting to apply premium hydrating moisturiser or whatever it’s called. Not Roger LeCarre, no thanks. A couple of years ago his niece had given him a tub of Nivea balm or something and he found himself throwing it directly into the fire just as a reflex. His sister-in-law had said he’d spoilt Christmas that day. What could he say? He was a man and you don’t give men moisturising cream for Christmas, not unless you want to watch it burn. He couldn’t help being a man. It wasn’t illegal. Not yet, anyway.
One thing that definitely was illegal was murder and by the sounds of it there’d just been one in front of the Guildhall Shopping Centre. Time to go to work. He switched off Radio Exe and got out of the car, the silky tones of 10cc still ringing in his handsome ears.
LeCarre had parked on the High Street, a perk of the job. There was nowhere in this city Detective Roger LeCarre couldn’t park. He looked to his right, up the gentle incline towards the John Lewis department store. Behind him was Cathedral Green. To his left, the way sloped down towards the River Exe, where amateur rowers would be displaying their skills. A quiet Sunday morning. If Saturday night in Exeter was about hedonism then Sunday morning was about redemption.
Just off the High Street stood the tiny St Pancras Church, in a small, secluded square, surrounded by the Guildhall Shopping Centre. LeCarre wound his way through a narrow side street.
Was there anywhere on earth in which the ancient and the new sat together in such proximity? A thirteenth-century church amongst dynamic capitalist retail temples such as F. Hinds, Claire’s and the Inspired Rooms Furniture Store. St Pancras Church, a modest stone structure, seemed almost embarrassed by the excesses of the modern age. Between the church and WHSmith were a series of large steps where shoppers could sit and rest with an exotic burger from one of the outdoor food stalls. On a busy Saturday afternoon, children would run up and down them mindlessly. Did they ever stop to think about St Pancras of Rome, beheaded in ad 304 at the age of fourteen for his faith? Probably not. Too busy pestering their parents for something from the nearby branch of Game.
What had happened the night before was no game. Unless you thought murder was a game. Which it wasn’t.
For Detective Roger LeCarre, stepping on to a crime scene was like stepping into a nice warm bath. This was his domain. Tiger Woods had the Augusta National, Roger Federer had Centre Court, LeCarre had police cordon, a newly dead body and some people walking around with those little plastic shoe covers on their feet.
‘Sorry, sir, you can’t come through, this is a crime scene,’ squeaked the young PC.
‘Oh, “crime scene”, is it? I thought it was a Christmas dinner with all the trimmings.’ LeCarre was notorious for making jokes and everyone loved him for it.
The PC stared back. Slow on the uptake, this one. LeCarre thought of another good joke but decided to let the kid off the hook. He flashed his badge. It glistened in the Sunday morning light.
‘Detective Inspector Roger LeCarre, but you can call me Detective Roger LeCarre.’ He tended to drop the ‘inspector’ because Detective Inspector was a bit of a mouthful. Also, just saying Detective rather than Detective Inspector sounded more American which made it inherently better. ‘This ain’t my first rodeo, but from the look on your face, I’m guessing it might be yours.’
‘S-s-sorry, sir,’ stuttered the infant PC.
‘Don’t worry about it, kid. What’s your name?’
‘PC Mohammed Flintoff . . . sir.’
‘How long you been in the game, . . .
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...