The Clementine Complex (Gary Thorn, 1)

Beloved comedian and #1 Sunday Times (London) bestselling author of the memoir And Away… Bob Mortimer returns with a delightfully quirky mystery in the vein of Richard Osman and Nita Prose.

Unremarkable legal assistant Gary Thorn goes for a pint with his coworker Brendan, unaware his life is about to change. There, Gary meets a beautiful woman, but she leaves before he catches her name. All he has to remember her by is the title of the book she was reading: The Clementine Complex. And when Brendan goes missing, too, Gary needs to track down the girl he now calls Clementine to get some answers.

And so begins Gary’s quest, through the estates and pie shops of South London, to find some answers and hopefully, some love and excitement in this page-turning, witty, and oddly sweet story with a cast of unforgettable characters.

Bob Mortimer was born in Middlesbrough in 1959, the youngest of four sons. He trained as a solicitor before a chance encounter with Vic Reeves in the 1980s led to a successful career in comedy as half of the duo Reeves and Mortimer. His screen credits include Shooting Stars, Big Night Out, Catterick and most recently BBC Two's Gone Fishing.

His memoir, And Away..., published in 2021, became the bestselling memoir of the year, was named The Times and Sunday Times Humour Book of the Year, and was shortlisted for Non-fiction Book of the Year at the National Book Awards. The Satsuma Complex, his first novel, was published in 2022. It was an instant Sunday Times bestseller and won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction in 2023.

He's on Twitter and Instagram as @RealBobMortimer.