Discover "The Clarinet on the Glacier"
This is the story of an expedition from the West of England to the Bernese Highlands in Switzerland, to retrieve the world's most expensive clarinet in five days without anybody noticing. Perhaps a bit low on hard violence, steamy sex or the other elements which you usually pretend to your family that you're not interested in for a good read. But at least it's different, and who knows ? Maybe the family will finally be intrigued enough to try reading it too (and take a break from the sex and violence which they hope you don't notice they're reading themselves).
In a certain way, this is a very easy story to follow. Unlike many novels, there is no huge cast list, which you have to keep referring back to more and more often the further you read, just to remember who's actually married to whom, murdering whom, sleeping with whom or just hanging out with whom. There are two principal characters, Jessica and Harris, who narrate the story and who are out to recover the clarinet of the title. She's a professional linguistic specialist, he's a music teacher. They're accompanied by Alice, Jessica's teenage niece who is also a piano student of Harris. They run into various characters but there are few who appear more than a couple of times other than Alice's parents who show up mainly on her phone. Like most people who call you unexpectedly in this way, they're extremely annoying.
This one's a tough call. It's a comedy adventure, set in the Swiss Alps, concerning an expedition of unlikely characters to get a very expensive, musical instrument off a mountain where it's been lost. It doesn't really fit neatly into a popular genre. No doubt it's the sort of thing which the shelf-stackers down the local bookstore absolutely hate. Whodunnits, historical fiction, spy stories, romance, science fiction and fantasy, children's literature - they're all fairly easy to fit into the correct category. Without a great deal of sex or violence but with a fair degree of dodgy humour and exaggerated set pieces, but also some appreciation of pretty scenery and the value of people being decent to each other, this is probably the sort of thing which ends up, "accidentally", in the new age thought section or on a shelf labeled, "What the hell ?"
Want to read some of the book itself ?
Try these entertaining samples.
Chapter 5 "Pratts and Dogs"
Harris has been called into the headmistress' office of the school where he works as a music teacher in Bristol, England. He has been asked to explain, in his own words, what he actually did to cause a serious accident the previous day. Unconvinced by his explanation, the headmistress starts to explain the version of the story which she has heard.
Chapter 16 "The Language of Love"
Jessica, Harris and Jessica's niece, Alice, are having breakfast in a hotel in Interlaken, Switzerland. This is the day when they are due to ascend the glacier where the clarinet has been lost. It seems to be a normal breakfast but Jessica is about to discover that things are taking a turn for the worse.
Chapter 30 "Charming"
Harris, Jessica and Alice are making their way from the Swiss border to an airport in France on a French train. A pushy ticket inspector has spotted that the clarinet they have is more valuable than most. Trying to get rid of him, Harris has accidentally knocked over the entire luggage rack in the carriage and this includes a glass-fronted tank carrying a snake, which has just got out.