Operation Cornwall

by Eddie Lancaster

Joe Bytheway is a middle-aged taxi driver whose life is only made bearable by the ten minutes he spends each day chatting online with his secret internet lover. She’s a lusty Cornish redhead who believes he’s a wealthy widower, rather than a downtrodden cash cow hitched to a spendthrift interior design addict named Sharon. A situation Joe can only dream of escaping until fate makes him witness to a murder and his deep longing for Lizzie from Looe spurs him into action.

Now with good reason to vanish off the face of the earth, he hatches a ruthless plan to begin a new life on the South Coast of Cornwall. Blissfully unaware that events unfolding in his wake might just scupper his dreams of alfresco beach BBQs and a wife-free future. Will this broadband Casanova finally ‘man up’ before his waxy temptress gets tired of waiting, or will Operation Cornwall simply end in calamitous disaster?

266 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 1, 2022

About the author

I was born in one of the small towns where Birmingham collides with the Black Country, making me a ‘Yam Yam’. I write comedy novels aimed mainly at my own generation, for folks who enjoy a laugh and don’t take life too seriously; anyone from toilet readers to bored van drivers and those poor souls sitting in a doctors waiting room hoping it’s not bad news. Plots as thin as cigarette paper, held together by a thousand dad gags. Vintage humour from a time before everyone got offended by everything and the difference between a joke and an insult was the expression on the face that said it.

My influences are the ‘golden years’ of film and television - Bless This House, George and Mildred, Carry-On, Man About the House, and more recently, Still Game, Bottom and The Young Ones. There’s a smattering of bad language and the odd knob gag, but very little sex, mainly because I think you have to be good at something in order to write about it! So I usually concentrate on characters who are skint and use them to poke fun at things I probably shouldn’t, subjects I know a lot about, to laugh at a time when life isn’t very funny…

Reviews

[John Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best of BBC (British Bawdy Comedy)!

I thought this story was hilarious, although it will probably give fundamentalist woke warriors a collective apoplectic nervous breakdown. Just about every nationality, religion and sex on the planet was lampooned mercilessly. We had neo-nazi skinhead bands, drug dealing Chinese triad gangs, murderous spouses, incompetent detectives and Tibetan terrorists. However, this was a parochial British comedy that may not travel well outside the UK, Ireland and, possibly, Oz. To everyone else, who may not appreciate the base humour, please believe me it really was a very funny tale.

[ukkindlecustomer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Laugh Out Loud Throughout

Hilarious black(country) farce featuring a unique mix of characters, linked by total incompetence and murderous intent. Ingeniously written, a riot from start to finish.

[Phil Altimas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read all of the author's books and have never been let down by them
they are funny but this one had my ribs aching.
a drug dealer's phone goes missing and the world is turned upside down
the plot is great, the characters are all believable.

i love the way there are two or three plots all intermingling and at the end they all come to a laugh out loud conclusion

keep it up Mr Lancaster

[AngelaC · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Chinese drug dealer's unintentional swan dive from the balcony of a block of flats in an insalubrious area of a Midlands town leads to thirty-six hours of mayhem involving a hapless, but scheming, taxi driver, his shopaholic wife, a skinhead punk band, a Chinese Triad and a cast of minor (in terms of appearance but not in terms of importance) characters. Together they produce explosions galore, murders (successful and otherwise) and poisoning.
This is the second Eddie Lancaster I've read and I enjoyed it less than the first one, mainly because of the repeated use of conjunctive clauses in place of complete sentences. While I understand that the device is used to suggest that we are reading/listening to the characters' thoughts, I found its frequency annoying. I often looked back to the beginning of "sentences" to try and reconstruct them. To no avail.
So, a 3-star for me. Or, as an English teacher might say, "Well thought out but could do better as far as the writing is concerned".

[C I KESZEI · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a lot of comedy in here but one man's meat etc etc

I chose this as a recommendation after finishing the funniest book I've read in years (Fruit by Will Heron), so it was always going to be a tough ask to follow.

There is a fair amount of humour in the book but whilst funny, subjective as it always is, I didn't find much of it laugh out loud funny (unlike Fruit).

The story really picked up in the last 20% (per Kindle) with some very good twists and turns and I'm glad I didn't stop before then or I would have missed the best bits.

Given the disadvantaged starting point, I'm going to pick another Eddie Lancaster book and see how I get on.

[John O'Donnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyable read

Deadpad funny I could not put it down. It suspends any doubt you might be having about Brummies being boring.

[Emz · Rating 4 out of 5]

When all is said and done, it was very entertaining and enjoyable, with quite a few good twists at the end that I must admit I did not see coming.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over too soon

I did enjoy this comey read from beginning to nearly the end but felt so let down by the abrupt ending! Dissapointed

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyable.

Such ridiculous storylines which knitted in so well together and was really quite funny. I loved the dry wit and character descriptions - and really enjoyed the book.

[mike edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

Operation cornwall

Great read very funny,great twists and turns ,look forward to the next book . . . . . . .

[Lorreine Kennedy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Negative Feedback, and simply loved it, so looked forward to this. If I had read this first I would not have read another of this. Some funny bits, but none of the characters were particularly likeable, or had any redeeming features. Not for me!

[Will Heron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Operation Cornwall is a riotous British crime romp through the landscape of modern Britain.

Taxi driver Joe can't stand his shopping addicted wife, she spends all his hard-earned cash on crap and the romance has long since fizzled out of their relationship and been replaced with hatred. He has met a Cornish candle maker online and dreams of escaping his life, murdering his wife and starting again in Cornwall.

He is distracted for a moment by a large Chinese drug dealer he was waiting for outside a dodgy tower block when he very rudely falls to his death in front of him. Not wishing to get tied up in whatever just happened, he drives off, forgetting he has his mobile phone in his cab.

It doesn't take long for an army of Triads seeking revenge and the Nazi skinheads responsible for the large Chinese mans attempt to fly to start to pursue Joe to get the phone back.

As he sets off to Cornwall with his wife to set his murderous plans in motion, followed by meth-smoking skinheads and 4*4's full of vengeful Chinese gang members, his terribly thought-out plan soon goes to pot as he realises he has been the victim of an online scam romance. There is no candle maker waiting for him with open arms and his wife has an ulterior motive for agreeing all too easily on the trip to Cornwall.

As the multiple storylines collide with explosions and shootings, will anyone survive intact and will the Police ever have any clue what has happened.