White Powder, Green Light - Softcover

The author of A White Merc with Fins has come up with a new, zany and very funny novel, a satire about the British film industry. Paul Salmon, 36-year-old film producer and heavy cocaine user, is desperately looking for a new project when by chance he learns about a certain Dr Jane Feverfew, lecturer in Spanish literature, who is doing a PhD on a little-known romance from the early 19th century. She had decided to do a sort of film version that demonstrated how exciting it all was, and Salmon thinks it will fit the bill beautifully, but inevitably everything starts to go wrong, and Jane (with a child and no husband) is in dire straits. It makes delightful reading, and is a laugh a minute.

In Soho Paul Salmon, co-producer of the ghastly Britpack Russian Mafia caper Base Metal, is busy chasing his next project, schmoozing It-girls and not taking cocaine. In Pontypool, Dr Jane Feverfew is busy wooing her ludicrous students, fighting her leek-carrying ex and wondering what the hell made her come to a country where she can't even spell the name of her son's school. In Cardiff, the Welsh cultural mafia are busy quaffing Australian cava at the annual Cymru-Wales Oscwr ceremony as they plan the disposal of next year's EU grants...Jane hasn't had sex for two years, but there are the same number of passable single men over thirty in Wales as anywhere else; that is, none. Her only excitement in life is a coy e-flirtation. But when she despairingly posts her mock-screenplay of a Spanish classic on the ResistYoof.com website (to show the sort of crap that Yoof likes) Paul Salmon happens upon it in a moment of coke-fuelled desperation...Salmon lies, chears and grovels to get the film Green Lighted as a Welsh epic, while also turning his lustful attentions onto Jane. As crossed wires, bad faith and wild ambition pile up, Jane dives blithely into the White Powder desert of actors, agents and W1 clubs, where old friends count for nothing, new ones count for less and the big, bad mother of all come-downs is waiting just around the corner. As Soho is annihilated in a firestorm of drugs, extra virgin oil and fennel, Jane comes to her senses too late - or at least, too late for salvation to come from any but the most unlikely of quarters...