“Brilliant one-liners, lightning action, lots of suspense and very funny -- self-deprecating Madrid is fast becoming my favorite hero.” -- Good Housekeeping (UK)
Journalist Nick Madrid finds himself up the proverbial creek -- the Amazon -- without a paddle when he's dispatched to South America to report on a Rock Against Drugs tour.
As if monstrous spiders, piranhas, kidnapping and tiny, spiky fish that swim up a stream of urine to lodge where a man least wants a tiny, spiky fish to lodge aren't enough, Madrid is drawn into the mystery of who is trying to kill the tour's headlining, larger-than-life, pain-in-the-posterior rock megastar Otis Barnes.
Madrid soon discovers that the murdering queue forms on the left for Mr. Barnes. The question is: Can he prevent Barnes' date with death at the final concert at Machu Picchu?
Peter Guttridge is the Royal Literary Fund writing fellow at the University of Southampton and teaches creative writing. His career was launched when he wrote a comic piece for a British magazine about his woeful experiences attempting to busk in New Orleans when he could neither sing nor play guitar. This same magazine sent him on a dizzying range of assignments, from going on a tour of Scandinavia with a rock band to performing as a male stripper in London's Soho. He has written about music, film, literature and the comedy industry for The Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Observer and The Sunday Times. He lives in Sussex on the edge of the South Downs National Park.