Burley Cross Postbox Theft

‘Pure, unadulterated entertainment.’ The Times

Burley Cross Postbox Theft

‘For attn PC Roger Topping, Ilkley

CONFIDENTIAL

Great news, Rog, great news–

At last all those long, incalculably boring, soul-destroying hours of trudging and waiting and moping and cussing have finally paid off, and the career-making case you’ve been yearning for (stuck out there on your lonesome, all stiff and cross and swollen – with that haunting, blue tinge around your gills – like a huge, neglected gouty toe; a beached whale; a dour, oversized funeral director with no funeral to direct; a bad joke; a lazy error; a missed train; a dropped stitch; an unsightly stain on the perfect, white napkin of West Yorkshire’s tea-cake and charity-shop capital) is about to land – not the cake, you dope – with a lovely, resounding plop! right in the middle of your capacious lap…’

The quaint moorside village of Burley Cross has been plunged into turmoil by the theft of the contents of its postbox, and when PC Roger Topping takes over the case, which his higher-ranking schoolmate Sergeant Laurence Everill has so far failed to crack, his expectations of success are not high. Yet Topping’s investigation into the curtain-twitching lives of Jeremy Baverstock, Baxter Thorndyke, the Jonty Weiss-Quinns, Mrs Tirza Parry (widow), and a splendid array of other weird and wonderful characters, will not only uncover the dark underbelly of his scenic beat, but also the fundamental strengths of his own character.

From the award-winning author of Darkmans comes a comic epistolary novel of startling originality and wit. Brazenly mischievous and irresistibly readable, Burley Cross Postbox Theft is a Cranford for today, albeit with a decent dose of Tamiflu, some dodgy sex-therapy and a whiff of cheap-smelling vodka.

About this enhanced edition

Nicola Barker’s new novel is now available tailor-made for the iPhone. It contains the full ebook as well as the unabridged audiobook synchronised to the text. In addition, the free version of the app, which includes the first letter from the book, including synchronised audio, will serialise a further three letters through the in-built postbox during the week of its launch. The audio recordings of these letters will also go up on the Enhanced Editions podcast.

About the author

Nicola Barker was the winner of the David Higham Prize for Fiction and joint winner of the Macmillan Silver Pen Award for Love Your Enemies, her first collection of stories (1993). Her first novel Reversed Forecast was published in 1994 and a short novel Small Holdings followed in 1995. A second collection of short stories Heading Inland, for which Nicola received an Arts Council Writers’ Award, and received the 1997 John Llewellyn Rhys/Mail on Sunday Prize. Her story ‘Symbiosis’ was filmed and broadcast on BBC2; another story, ‘Dual Balls’, was commissioned for broadcast on Channel 4 and shortlisted for a BAFTA Award. Her third novel Wide Open was published in 1998, and won the English-speaking world’s biggest literary award for a single work, the IMPAC Prize. Her fifth novel, Behindlings, was published in 2002 and the following novel, Clear, was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2004. Her most recent novel, Darkmans, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2007. She is one of Granta’s ‘Best Young British Novelists’ of the decade.

The application has been developed in association with Fourth Estate.