Book excerpt: A humorous novel about a private eye living an uneventful life in Brighton until normality gives way to a kind of mad logic. Frank, a private eye in Brighton, is the perfect lodger: neat, quiet, and solitary, a decent man leading an uneventful life. Then his neighbour announces she’s pregnant, his landlady’s budgie is strangled, his boss retires to a sauna, his client’s wife is murdered, the client himself drowns, and his client’s sister dies in a fall from a high cliff path. As Frank’s world tightens into a circle of chaos and death, he seeks escape. But will this be the catalyst he needs, or just another step towards the total collapse of his life?