Days (49 page)

He looks round at the six still-living sons of Septimus Day, and in their widened, white eyes sees fear, and something else besides, something he is reluctant to name.

“Sonny is going to be with us every day from now on,” Mungo tells Perch. “He’s turned over a new leaf.”

“I... I see, sir. Yes.”

“I personally will make sure that he gets up in good time and is prompt for breakfast. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Very good. Well, Perch?” Mungo attempts to instil the words with his usual authority, but it sounds like a child’s gruff imitation of a grown-up. “Our snack?”

Perch takes one last look around the table, then closes his eyes very slowly and, equally slowly, nods.

“Of course, sir,” he says. “Sandwiches for seven, coming up.”

Acknowledgements

Adam Brockbank was involved with
Days
since its inception, and helped shape a handful of amorphous concepts into a plot, suggested ideas, proposed different (and invariably better) ways of doing things, and throughout the writing of the novel offered accurate, insightful comments and criticisms.

On the technical side of things, Lieutenant Hugh Holton of the Chicago Police Department initiated me into the mysteries of handgun use and arranged a memorable and eye-opening tour of his precinct station. Ian Hillier, meanwhile, was kind enough to give me a few pointers on how to go about constructing a homemade deflagrating device. Viva the Kew Liberation Front!

Peter Crowther has been a constant source of support and reassurance, always ready to give me a metaphorical clip round the ear whenever I’ve started whingeing but also always ready to cheer me up whenever I’ve really needed it.

Simon Spanton found the book a good home at Orion, and his incisive editing, far from inflicting a death of a thousand cuts, proved to be fat-reducing surgery of the highest order.

John Kunzler and Lesley Plant I have to thank for countless Sunday suppers and Sega sessions. I am equally grateful to the boys at Flying Pig Systems Ltd. for many things, the least of which is calling their company Flying Pig Systems Ltd.

Finally, Susan Gleason took on the unenviable role of being the squeaky wheel that gets the oil, or, as it’s technically known, “literary agent”. It is a task she has performed with grace, dedication and a necessary measure of good humour.

These are the people without whom, etc. etc.

James Lovegrove

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The
Hope
is a vast ocean liner, five miles long and two miles wide and one mile high, which lurches through the waves on a voyage to nowhere, carrying a million passengers in her rusting belly. After some thirty years at sea, everyone aboard her has gone just a little bit loopy, and violent death has become a way of life. All sorts of horrors lurk in the ship’s darkest corners — rumours made flesh, unspeakable creatures, peripheral-vision insanities. The only certainty is this: the Hope, which was once a multimillionaire philanthropist’s dream, has become a floating nightmare.

“As an allegory of late-20th-century existence, it catches admirably the rust, waste and putrescence of consumer ideals. I am glad to think that the 1990s will be decorated by more of Mr Lovegrove’s fiction.”

The Spectator

“Lovegrove’s controlled writing... the words accurate as assassin’s bullets... is the book’s best argument against the anarchy of the unleashed future that is depicted so vividly in this first and fierce effort.”

The Sunday Times

“Very gutsy first work with tremendous spark and imagination.”

The Daily Telegraph

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The Families: insanely rich and richly insane. With world-spanning business interests, glamour and power, they are monarchs, Mafia and movie stars rolled into one.

Top British Family the Gleeds are hosting the social event of the year, their Annual Ball. Venice has been reconstructed in all its glory in the grounds of their estate, Dashlands, and should provide the perfect romantic backdrop for Provender – the young, disaffected Gleed heir upon whom the Family line, and status, depends – finally to find a wife. But Provender shows no sign of settling down with any of the social beauties his mother parades before him ... and in the moment when love
does
begin to blossom, Provender is kidnapped by an anti-Familial revolutionary.

The future of the Gleeds, and of Europe, depends on the skills of two Anagrammatic Detectives – while Provender's own future depends on the dark eyes and equally dark wit of a girl called Isis.

“Pick up James Lovegrove’s latest novel and you can rest assured that you are in the safe hands of a master craftsman. There a few things sweeter than reading a writer who’s so absolutely in love with the English language, and Lovegrove is clearly head over heels.”

SFX

“A genuinely compelling story, a mixture of cliff-hanging political thriller and semantic farce. It is some of its author’s best work thus far.
Provender Gleed
is not especially valuable as SF, but its satire strikes vigorously home in the end, and its motivating love story is wonderfully conceived and handled.”

Locus

“James Lovegrove’s new novel wears its costumes and disguises with acuity, mischief and skill. What starts off as a contemporary comedy of manners soon morphs into something more dangerous and nourishing, while all the way through the trademark Lovegrovian quirks are easily and brilliantly visible.”

Interzone

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A collection of previously unseen stories, favourites from 'Interzone' magazine and contributions to numerous science fiction and fantasy anthologies
Imagined Slights
showcases one of the most versatile and elegant writers on the genre scene today. Whether taking you through 'Britworld
^TM
' - Britain turned into a theme park, exploring the possibilities of the lonely hearts ad in 'Thanatophile Seeks Similar', or imagining the disability of a child without wings in a world where wings are the norm in the moving short story, 'Wings', James Lovegrove is incapable of writing a dull sentence.

“...an abundance of intriguing character detail and finely-wrought emotional payoff... Mostly exquisite and ultimately moving,
Imagined Slights
is a refreshingly elegant and subtle collection.”

SFX

“...these are intensely human documents, SF in the service not of concept but of feeling. Wry and immediate, they truly explore only the present.
Imagined Slights
is a very contemporary book.”

Nick Gevers,
Locus

“...most definitely the good stuff. I thoroughly recommend this collection as the perfect antidote to the ‘I don’t read short stories, me’ malaise. Whatever excuse you’ve used before, prepare to cast it aside and lose yourself in some truly excellent prose.”

The Alien Online

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