In the Footsteps of Harrison Dextrose - Nick Griffiths

Legend Press sent me this a few weeks ago and I am very impressed by their marketing strategy.  They have a Word of Mouth campaign in effect and they ask if you enjoy reading a book you do the following:

1. Recommend it - pass it on to friends
2. Review it - on your own blog if you have one, or with Waterstones, WH Smith, Amazon etc
3. Read another title - order a book and then email info@legendpress.co.uk just after you have placed your order quoting Word of Mouth and they will send you another book with your order absolutely free

This sounds a pretty good campaign to me and with a young publishing house such as this, the ideal way to spread the word.  I have seen this book in Waterstones so they have got it in there and more power to their elbow say I.

Now to the book.  Well, what can I say?  I think the simplest way to sum up my feelings about In the Footsteps is to say that if you liked Monty Python and appreciate their humour, then this book is for you.  I am in the older generation of readers and from the tag line on the cover 'This book is cooler than David Hasselhoff in a room ful of otters' (Popbitch.com) I would think that I am probably not their target audience.  However, I did receive it and I did read it and I enjoyed it very much and found myself sniggering and giggling at quite frequent intervals as I turned the pages.

The opening paragraph "It was my 18th birthday when I chanced upon Harrison Dextrose's The Lost Incompetent: A Bible for the Inept Traveller, little knowing that it would one day lead me to kill a man with a dead penguin..." is certainly an attention grabber to put it mildly.  How can you not read on after that?

Alexander Grey, an orphan ("Father had electrocuted himself cutting through the cable of his new electric mower and Mother had suffered a similar fate, trying to rescue him.  They were spotted over the garden fence, locked together in death's grip, having massacred the petunias"), has a comfortable income and a total lack of get up and go and spends most of his time watching TV, doing nothing and frittering away his existence for fifteen years until he decides to follow the footsteps of Harrison Dextrose and see if he can track him down.  The fact that the gorgeous Suzy Goodenough who he has lusted after for years has promised him "carnal delights as his prize" probably is the main reason for his sudden leap from inertia to action.

And so off he goes.  His journey starts at Blithering Cove, a decaying harbour town on England's North-East Coast and he charters a vessel, The Unsmoked Haddock, to take him to the island of St Elmo (Population: No idea; Capita: Skaramanger; Currency: Emoti; Principle Industry; Fishing, rugs) on the first leg of his trek in the footsteps of his hero.  This boat is captained by Mahaffey and his dog and one night when they both sleep the dog is left in charge of steering the ship "the mutt was in the cabin, propped up on its hind legs, forelegs draped over the wheel". Next morning St Elmo is in sight - or is it?  Turns out it is another island completely "Dog took us off course" said Mahaffey as they arrive at the wonderfully named island of Frartsi instead.

I could spend the next half hour and a mile long post reeling off the adventures of our Hero in his quest, but no point.  Best if you just go out and buy this book to discover the joys of the Frihedhag sisters, his friendship with a Greek dwarf on stilts addicted to The Blues Brothers, find out just how he killed somebody with a dead penguin and, of course, see if he fulfils his quest and finally meets up with the great Harrison Dextrose.

As I said at the start of this post, pretty sure I am not the part of the market Legend Press are hoping to reach with this book, but having said that, I found it very funny and written with great panache and style and I get the distinct impression that the author, Nick Griffiths, had a hoot writing it.  I note from the last page that a second book called Looking for Mrs Dextrose will be with us in due course.  I shall keep an eye out for it.

Have just checked out the Legend Press website and this is Nick's biography (I warm to him even more now that I discover he is a fan of Bill Bryson):

Nick graduated from King's College, London, in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. By mistake. He managed to turn this around, becoming a journalist, on the music press (Sounds, Select), then women's magazines (New Woman, Options), before settling as a TV writer with Radio Times and the Daily Mail. He has also written for The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Time Out and others, and scripted the Sunday morning children's TV show, Dog & Dinosaur, for BBC Choice. His Doctor Who memoir, Dalek I Loved You, was published by Orion in 2007. He's a big fan of Bill Bryson and one day thought, "I could write something like that!", except he rarely travels anywhere, so he had to make it all up. In the Footsteps of Harrison Dextrose was the result.

Anybody who graduated with a degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering by mistake has to be worth checking out don't you think?  Take a look at his website here.

Comments

[Juxtabook]

What a nicely judged review of something that was off the beaten path for you. From the cover it would not have jumped out at me as a book I wanted to read either, but you made it sound so warm and funny that I shall keep my eye out for it.

[Elaine Simpson-Long]

No it was not a book I would have picked up either but very glad it was sent to me and I enjoyed it very much