Benjamin Malaussene is a down trodden publisher at Vendetta Press. Treated as a scapegoat by Queen Zabo, the redoubtable doyenne of publishing, he has finally had enough. After one row too many with her, he resigns, only for Zabo to offer him a starring role. All he has to do is to impersonate the world's best-loved, but hitherto anonymous author, J L B. As always, however, things are never simple for Malaussene and his extended family of misfits and chancers. Soon, he is in it deep: the theft of a manuscript, a frenzied readership, his private life in disarray, and then a spate of connected murders which threaten to destroy Vendetta Press.
