This is the alarming sequel to Robert Edesonβs enigmatic, wonderful book The Weaver Fish, which won the TAG Hungerford Award a couple of years ago.
Bad to Worse contains everything you wouldnβt expect to find in a novel, like footnotes and endnotes, appendices, an index that operates like a cryptic crossword, maths equations and philosophy discussions, set exercises, poetry and top tips for how to survive a midair collision.
These are bonus features to a sweet and funny crime novel with a lively plot, fiendish baddies and clever, efficient goodies, and a whole bunch of very good friends.
The plot: when Walter Reckles emerges unscathed from an aircraft crash in the Arizona desert, his story that his plane crashed because it hit a drone is shut down fast. Recklesβ story at the board of investigation is disbelieved, and his reputation discredited. But luckily for him, Richard Worse (our hero from The Weaver Fish) is soon on the case, along with his cousin Thomas, sixth-generation Sheriff of Dante County. Here in Arizona, a centuries-old feud between the Worse and Mortiss families is slowly coming to the boil, and it would seem that Reckles has inadvertently exposed a secret that the Mortiss family would prefer to remain hidden.
Meanwhile, in a cave in the Ferendes, Edvard TΓΈssentern and his colleague Paulo are examining ancient hieroglyphs that cover the wall of the cave and endeavouring to decipher a seemingly uncrackable code.
Before the book is done, we will learn the secret of the hieroglyphs, see a man killed by a monstrous bipedal crab, discover what nefarious business the Camelline Shipping Company is conducting in the casinos of cruise ships, and why the mineral terencium is so important to the Mortiss empire.
This is a novel where friendship and morality triumph over evil plots and cunning plans, in the most entertaining way possible.
Like Edesonβs first book, the feel of this one is international rather than local: it is set in Dante Arizona and in the South China Sea, London and Cambridge, as well as in a cruise ship that leaves Fremantle heading out into the Indian Ocean. The book is loaded with maths jokes and scientific theorems, some fictional and some real. Itβs a book for intelligent, urbane readers with a sense of humour.