The 2011 CGD Award Winner! Gripping, Thrilling, Funny, Compelling. Set in small-town Middle England where nothing nasty should ever happen, this darkly comedic thriller will make you laugh, cry, and question one or two of life's quirkier realities. Lying somewhere between Niall Johnson's and Richard Russo's 'Keeping Mum' and CBS televisions 'Dexter' (a serial killer hero - should you love him or hate him?). 'Cross-dressed to kill' picks up the story of a likeable rogue, a gently camp hairdresser who, disappointed with life and disillusioned with his once glittering career, after he begins chatting neurotically to his contrary reflection in a salon mirror, starts disposing of his most irritating clients. The novel follows its 'hero' through the course of one turbulent year, charting half a dozen 'unfortunate' murders, a host of twists and turns, and ultimately a devastating revenge....
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'Easy reading at its very best, a captivating writing style'. Petra Kitto - CGD July 2011
'Fab holiday reading, had me laughing on the sand and on the edge of my bed last thing before sundown' Ava Gale - Ms-Mail Feb 2011
'In Cross dressed to kill' Andrew Lucas presents us with a baddy indeed, but a nicer, more appealing villain, a serial killer to love, a Sweeney Todd for the 21st century' . Max Southwell - Read/Write, May 2011.
'CROSS DRESSED TO KILL is what Graham Greene used to call 'an entertainment'. It is not quite a traditional literary novel, although the style of writing is literary, and it makes no pretentions to changing the face of the cultural history of our century. It sets out to amuse, surprise, and entertain, and in this it succeeds. It is pleasingly amoral. The novel is driven conventionally by plot, character, and situation, but also by a very sure hand with dialogue, inner thought, and both mental and physical landscape, which effectively advances the narrative. While it is a well paced, escapist, witty read and can be enjoyed on that level alone, there is more than a whisper, a resonance, of social comment, which - without wishing to sound too pretentious - I think gives the manuscript bite. I read this on a fine cold afternoon in my conservatory in Oxfordshire with a glass of Chardonnay at my elbow, and it the novel was well suited to that function. Andrew Lucas successfully creates in the reader the suspension of disbelief, which has been the task of the novelist since the first storyteller unrolled his mat in the market square, and gives him or her a few hours of escapist pleasure. The reader is inextricably involved in the happenings. I am sure that I will not be the only person to appreciate this well structured, blackly comedic thriller. In particular, it has an original plot, which, these days, is not all that frequently encountered. I don't think there has been murderous hairdresser since the demise of Sweeney Todd.' Bryn Blackthorn PP and E.