The Silence of the Shaggy Rug

In the long tradition of the anti-hero in English literature, award-winning author Daniel Jacob has created a whole bunch of them—each able to stand shoulder to shoulder with a Flashman or anyone from the pages of a Waugh novel. With the touch of a Tom Sharpe for grand farce, the grotesque Crooke-Wells siblings trace their mean, mendacious, and downright nasty steps through a series of plots and pitfalls in their attempt to accumulate unearned and entirely unmerited wealth. Standing like a beacon in this sea of iniquity is the mother, whose string of illicit love affairs seems positively honest by comparison. This is the story of an upper-crust English family which is part of a sub-group known as The Hereditary Rich. Beautifully written and splendidly wicked, The Silence of the Shaggy Rug is not for the faint-hearted or politically correct.

Born in Nottingham, Daniel Jacob went from van-boy to a senior manager with a Dutch multinational. The UK, Africa, South America, and Europe have been home, and he has visited every continent, except Antarctica. Life experiences include canoeing on the Amazon, having ‘tea’ with Borneo head-hunters, walking in Death Valley, and reviewing his sales forecast with an African Witchdoctor. His one-act plays, a farce and a drama, blind judged by a NODA panel, were awarded 1st and 3rd prize in successive years. This inspired Daniel to write The Silence of the Shaggy Rug.