Don't Tell Alfred
by Nancy Mitford | 
Norwood
by Charles Portis | 
Charade
by John Mortimer | 
Masters of Atlantis
by Charles Portis | 
Gringos
by Charles Portis |
Flying Under Bridges
by Sandi Toksvig | 
Love Monkey
by Kyle Smith | 
Walking Across Egypt
by Clyde Edgerton | 
The Trick of It
by Michael Frayn |
All Quiet on the Orient Express
by Magnus Mills |
Reuben, Reuben
by Peter De Vries |
The Wrong Boy
by Willy Russell | 
Ginger, You're Barmy
by David Lodge | 
The Hundred Brothers
by Donald Antrim | 
Et Tu, Babe
by Mark Leyner | 
Eating People is Wrong
by Malcolm Bradbury | 
Slouching Towards Kalamazoo
by Peter De Vries | 
Home Truths
by David Lodge | 
The Uncommon Reader
by Alan Bennett | 
Straight Man
by Richard Russo |
The narrator is Ray Midge, down-at-the-heels Southerner after his wife. "Norma had run off with Guy Dupree and I was waiting around for the credit card billings to come in so I could see where they had gone." The fussbudget is assailed by tropical storms, grifters, hippies, car trouble, and candy wrappers at high speed "wind came up through the floor hole in such a way that the Heath wrappers were suspended behind my head in a noisy brown vortex". Leech Dr Reo Symes is a font of dubious financial schemes and fluff such as a circus "fifty-pound rat from the sewers of Paris, France. Of course it didn't really weigh fifty pounds and it wasn't your true rat and it wasn't from Paris, France, either. It was some kind of animal from South America."