Previously Published Book
Humour
British & Australian Fiction
Driven by the sound of his mother's mouldy foot stomping from the other side of her grave, Gavin Troop steps out to rid the world of sewage. The son of an escapee from the sperm bank, he soon takes on the mantle of messiah and surrounds himself with a small band of suburban householders and aggressive small investors. These offer their own wrinkled legs and assorted obsessions to help him achieve his goal.
Gavin identifies politics as his life's mission and stands for parliament on the one-issue platform of sewage mitigation. He makes it as Prime Minister just as the banking fundamentalists erupt onto the global arena, joining forces with the armies of displaced sewage workers. A giant conflict becomes inevitable despite Gavin's determination to push on with sewage prevention as his top priority. Only confusion can result.
In a disintegrating world of free lunches showering down from bank buildings, of power-packed little leaguers out for blood and mafiosi suicide squads swinging around him on the ends of their ropes, Gavin steps gingerly onwards, wishing, as ever, for the guidance of his lost father. Perhaps in the end he will rescue Michellette the call girl from the chief banker's manic cooking lessons, even as his own technical wizard solves the problems of dark smelly residues. But will he ever be wise enough to distinguish the sound of a single hand clapping from the drone of a settling tank agitator?