Cast Adrift - Peter Guttridge

Nick Madrid: the continuing story of a life lived badly.

Amiable, accident-prone journalist Nick Madrid has done some competitive fencing in the past and keeps fit by practising astanga vinyasa yoga. He is also something of a film buff, all of which qualify him as the prime (and only) candidate for the job of replacement stuntman on a low-budget (a very low-budget) pirate film (and musical) being shot in the Caribbean. With an oddball cast of Hollywood rejects and has-beens, not to mention a cameo appearance by Madrid’s best friend Bridget ‘The Bitch of the Broadsheets’ Frost, dodgy props and a Second Unit which seems to be very busy doing something totally unconnected with the film, there seems little chance of sticking to the script.

To confuse matters further, real, modern-day pirates turn up and the principle cast members are shipwrecked on an island with the sole survivor of  Cast Adrift, a reality television game show gone horribly (very horribly) wrong. To add to the chaos, Nick, as usual, ends up naked and once again at the mercy of the predatory wildlife.

And just what did happen to the original stuntman?

  Described as ‘Agatha Christie on laughing gas’, Peter Guttridge’s whacky, over-the-top comedy thrillers quickly found fans among the some of the top names in British crime writing. Val McDermid said of them:‘Managed the rare double of making me laugh out loud and wince in sympathy…enormous fun’ and the late Reginald Hill described the Nick Madrid series as: ‘A fast moving, laugh-a-line frolic…we gasp with amazement, excitement and amusement.’