Making Stuff Up

by Bill James

Meet the hot-house student talent in a University Creative Writing course for would-be poets, novelists, dramatists ? and some talents not so hot. Rivalries burn and grow dangerous. Sex simmers. Lucy Corth, a lecturer, is given the sack and almost immediately afterwards turns out to be a published literary genius. Meantime, Principal of the University Caspar Ballaugh must do what he can to suppress these internal wars and pull the college up from its low spot in the educational league tables, so that it can qualify for bigger Government money and survive. His job is made trickier by the fact that the Government's policy seems to change every other day. One way for Ballaugh to secure glory for his university might be to help get the local city a glistening European award for cultural achievement. He works on it gamely, but there are mighty snags.

184 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Bill James (born 1929) is a pseudonym of James Tucker, a Welsh novelist. He also writes under his own name and the pseudonyms David Craig and Judith Jones. He was a reporter with the Daily Mirror and various other newspapers after serving with the RAF He is married, with four children, and lives in South Wales.

The bulk of his output under the Bill James pseudonym is the Harpur and Iles series. Colin Harpur is a Detective Chief Inspector and Desmond Iles is the Assistant Chief Constable in an unnamed coastal city in southwestern England. Harpur and Iles are complemented by an evolving cast of other recurring characters on both sides of the law. The books are characterized by a grim humour and a bleak view of the relationship between the public, the police force and the criminal element. The first few are designated "A Detective Colin Harpur Novel" but as the series progressed they began to be published with the designation "A Harpur & Iles Mystery".

His best known work, written under the "David Craig" pseudonym and originally titled Whose Little Girl are You, is The Squeeze, which was turned into a film starring Stacy Keach, Edward Fox and David Hemmings. The fourth Harpur & Iles novel, Protection, was televised by the BBC in 1996 as Harpur & Iles, starring Aneirin Hughes as Harpur and Hywel Bennett as Iles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_James_(novelist)