Hound Dog

'Blandford does for fat, middle-aged, coke-addicted, sex-deviant Elvis impersonators what Peter Guralnick has done for the man himself' Niall Griffiths.

Elvis is the premier Elvis impersonator in the whole of the Cambridgeshire region. He's fat and bald and old; partial to cocaine, he sells skunk to the local teenagers; he masturbates five or six times a day, and he hates Elvis Presley. Elvis has been married three times, but, as he ways, never for very long. He finds being Elvis a useful way into the beds of Cambridgeshire's bored housewives.

Elvis's life starts to go wrong when his backing singers, Gay Elvis and Fat Elvis, mutiny. They love Elvis Presley and want to sing the songs in historical sequence. He replaces them with Buddy Holly, a postman with bladder problems, but the new arrangement is not without its difficulties. Then Eddie calls to offer the biggest gig yet of Elvis's career. Eddie, a gay gangster who 'looked after' Elvis on one of his stints in prison, wants him to perform at the birthday party of Johnny Brooks, another gangster, even more vicious, who just happens to be married to Elvis's third ex-wife.

Without question the best Elvis-impersonator novel you'll ever read. 'Hound Dog' is very very funny and really quite sad. It marks the debut of a formidable new writer.