Description

What goes through your head as time stands still in the seconds before you die? Journalist Teddy Beresford is about to find out.
When he is killed on a notorious stretch of road, everyone assumes that it was an accident.
The key to what really happened lies in Teddy’s bizarre, newspaper-style diary. There is his torrid affair with the driver, a married woman, but his downfall goes far deeper, into a world of broken promises, backstabbing and deceit.
   Here in the Cull Valley is a brilliantly perceptive tragi-comedy. This is a novel about betrayal and the destructive nature of sexual obsession.

The story offers a fascinating insight into the vanishing world of Britain’s regional newspapers as, through the diary and two other compelling and unique story-telling devices, the tragedy and its roots are laid bare.

Stephen Lewis (York Press):

‘The fictional news reports and features are a particular joy, capturing to a tee the fake gossipy sentimentality of a certain type of newspaper feature and the bland clichés of some news reports.’

Ron Godfrey (Argus, Brighton):

‘Wheatcroft, himself a journalist of huge experience on Northern newspapers, proves the point that if reporters can’t tell the whole story, then as an author he can – and with powerful humour, invention, perception and poignancy.’

Andrew Martin, the novelist, best known for his Jim Stringer murder mysteries says of Here in the Cull Valley:

“Here In The Cull Valley is a completely plausible psychological mystery. It is doom-laden, but laced with humour as elegantly dry as a good Chablis.”

He also said: “The journalistic pastiche is excellent.”