A Man With An Agenda

In 'Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity' Tom Taylor's life changes dramatically. He goes from being a coat-tails riding literary namesake to being a possible new messiah to child wizard loving children and internet geeks everywhere, and suspected murderer. He might also be a fraud, and there might have been some magic in his father's books after all.

Tom is extradited to France for trial, and is placed in the Donostia prison. He must escape and figure out the powers that are available to him with the unlikely help of the woman who pointed out the lie of his childhood, and a tabloid journalist. Meanwhile, there are echoes of 'The Song of Roland' and 'Jud Süss' to be dealt with and, at the end a brilliant episode, introduces us to 'The Willowbank Tales', a pastiche of the Hundred Acre Wood, the stories of Beatrix Potter and Thornton W.Burgess's 'Mother West Wind' stories (Spotty the Turtle, Bobby Raccoon, etc.). A petty criminal has been transformed into "Mr. Bun" and imprisoned in the world and desperately wants to escape. I can't do justice to how funny that was. It reminded me of some of the best in Jasper Fforde's novels, with more daring.

The Unwritten

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