The Hargreaves Code

by Darren Worrow

When a murder takes place in the London Museum of Toys and Collectables its sexy but shy curator, Miss Heather Lovely seeks out who she thinks is a Harvard Professor but really is a bit of a simpleton that clears tables in a fast food restaurant, Robert Longdong to help her solve the case, while he just thinks he’s onto a sure thing they end up uncovering more than they bargained for, exposing a conspiracy theory created by a sinister organisation that involves changing the very shape of human existence and takes them off exploring an alternative universe to uncover a god-like children’s author. Oh yeah, and they have a few laughs on the way.

It should be noted at this point that this title is in no way like anything that a more renowned author Dan Brown has ever written, so there!

104 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 24, 2012

About the author

I was born in the Fling Dynasty of a small planet known as Duncan in a galaxy far, far away. My humble parents, believing the planet was on the eve of destruction, sent me off as a baby in an egg-shaped craft and I landed here on planet Earth in the spring of 1973. I was later to discover through a cavern of ice, as you do, that the planet was fine all the time and it was just a particularly nasty prank by my father’s mates down the pub.
I landed in a deep jungle and was raised by a company of wolves, learning to live as they did. Until one day when a naughty tiger with a very English accent came along and I was whisked away by a black panther and a jazz singing bear to a man-village. It wasn’t the tiger I was worried about; it was the American cartoon producer following on behind him.

It was at the village that I won a golden ticket to visit a chocolate factory where I fell into a river made of chocolate and was sucked up a pipe into a fudge room; happy days. It could have been worse; I heard some other kid turned into an exploding blueberry.

I lived at a coastal Inn for a while until an old sailor paid me a penny to look out for a legless seadog. In finding him I discovered a treasure map and was promptly whisked away by a sailor to a Caribbean island where I got into a bit of a rumble with some pirate radio DJ called Captain Tony Blackbeard. It was that or another holiday in Clacton.

At eleven I was taken away by a man with an uncanny resemblance to actor and comedian Robbie Coltrane to a school for wizards where I had to battle it out with some bald blue bloke who killed my parents, said he was a lawyer working for an author called JK Rolling or something. That wasn’t as bad as the frog flavoured semolina we had to eat for school dinner.

As I grew up and went to college I decided to give my favourite toys, a cowboy and a space ranger, away to a snotty girl from around the corner, nobody told me the cowboy was really Tom Hanks otherwise I would have given them away a lot sooner.

So, other than the time I was bitten by a rare spider and found myself with special arachnid powers which I used to defeat an evil leprechaun, I left college and it was all very uneventful.

Nowadays I have settled down to a family life and enjoy writing books, striving to be more like Bruce Bogtrotter every day. People say “where do you get your ideas from?” I tell them I have no idea, I've had such a boring, everyday life.

If you really can be bothered to know more about me why don’t you visit my website at www.darrenworrow.webs.com and find out even more honest facts?

Reviews

[Graham Downs · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a real "guilty pleasure" book, because it's just so damn FUNNY!

I'm not going to talk about how terrible the writing is, or about how everything's better "then" everything else, or how things happen on the "spare" of the moment. Or about the proliferation of full stops, where elipses are sometimes three dots, sometimes five, and sometimes fifteen.

I'm not even going to mention how every character sounds more-or-less the same, and even the Americans sound British and talk about sick bags (although at one point, a truly awkward misunderstanding arises from the fact that Americans use the word "fanny" to refer to one's backside, while the Brits use it to refer to the front).

I'm not going to talk about any of those things, because they might actually turn out to be "by design", and even if they're not, they definitely add to how much fun this book is!

This is definitely a book that doesn't take itself too seriously. It's meant as a parody of Dan Brown in general (and The Da Vinci Code in particular); I haven't read any Dan Brown myself, but I've heard enough about him to catch most of the references... even if the book didn't make its feelings about that particular author perfectly clear at every opportunity.

Grammar Nazis like me will have a hard time getting past the writing, but I guarantee you, if you try just a little bit, you won't be able to put this book down. As the Brits might say, it's rollicking good fun.

Click here to find out where you can get your hands on a copy: https://books2read.com/u/m2rlnO