Jasper Fforde
First Among Sequels
The Danverclone seemed to hang in the air for a moment before a large wave caught her and she was left behind the rapidly moving taxi.
Illustrations by Bill Mudron and Dylan Meconis
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Agatha Christie Limited (A Chorion Company) for reference to They Do It with Mirrors © Agatha Christie (A Chorion Company). All rights reserved.
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For Cressida,
the bestest sister in the world
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The year is 2002. It is fourteen years since Thursday almost pegged out at the 1988 Croquet SuperHoop, and life is beginning to get back to normal…
1. Breakfast
The Swindon that I knew in 2002 had a lot going for it. A busy financial center coupled with excellent infrastructure and surrounded by green and peaceful countryside had made the city about as popular a place as you might find anywhere in the nation. We had our own forty-thousand-seat croquet stadium, the recently finished Cathedral of St. Zvlkx, a concert hall, two local TV networks and the only radio station in En gland dedicated solely to mariachi music. Our central position in southern En gland also made us the hub for high-speed overland travel from the newly appointed Clary-LaMarr Travelport. It was little wonder that we called Swindon “the Jewel on the M4.”