From the author of the international best-seller The Stone Man, shortlisted for Audible UK’s Book of the Year Award 2015.
In the late 1990s, a laptop was found in a service station just outside of Manchester. It contained a digital journal entitled ‘TO THE FINDER: OPEN NOW TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE!’ Now, for the first time, that infamous diary is being published in its entirety.
It’s 1998. The Internet age is still in its infancy. Google has just been founded. Eighteen-year-old supermarket shelf-stacker Nigel Carmelite has decided that he’s going to become a vigilante.
There are a few problems: how is he going to even find crime to fight on the streets of Derbyshire? How will he create a superhero costume – and an arsenal of crime-fighting weaponry – on a shoestring budget? And will his history of blackouts and crippling social inadequacy affect his chances? This is Nigel’s account of his journey; part diary, part deluded self-help manual, tragically comic and slowly descending into what is arguably Luke Smitherd’s darkest and most violent novel.
What do you believe in? And more importantly, should you?
Smitherd Does It Again! I will admit that the more I read, the more I like Luke Smitherd’s books. This one veers away from the supernatural and tells the story of a young lad and his plan to become the first “real” superhero.
first… you need a plan… I couldn’t put this book down! It was amazing! Nigel Carmelite decided he wanted to become a superhero… and he decided to document his journey as he completed the steps to his plan… and that’s all I can say without spoiling it for you!
Being a Superhero Isn’t Always Good Regular readers of Luke Smitherd may find themselves checking the cover of this book to make sure he actually wrote it because it is unlike any of his other works. First, there is nothing paranormal or supernatural about it; second, it is laugh-out-loud funny at some points; and, finally, the main character is a disturbed teenage boy who wants to become the world’s first “real” superhero.