Introduction: THE MAN WHO READ BOOKS



This is where the action in A Life in Cheese - Reboot takes places

 

Attempting to put together an account of The Big Top, the secret organisation within the powerful Frontiere Corporation, which itself was a front for the New Zealand Secret Service (Cheese Division) in the months between April and September of 1991 has proved to be a difficult task. All records of that period appear to have been systematically destroyed at the behest of its Controller, Sir Crispen Fotherington-Smythe – or so it seemed.

Much is known about the period that preceded it – the uncovering of the Egyptian super-villain Cheesefinger aka Abdullah Fahad Achmed Al Mohammed bin Abdul Muhammed Fuad Abdullah Aziz Smith; the true identity of the controversial science-fiction writer Elroy Hubble as George Friteuse; the banning of the game Trivial Pursuit throughout New Zealand and the inevitable riots that followed; the undercover work carried out by Jim Friteuse and his dedicated team, along with a senior British police officer, who posed as petty criminals to reveal Martin Garré and his more intelligent wife’s ruthless gang of Bitey Cheese smugglers; and the appointment of Sir Crispen Fotherington-Smythe as head of the Frontiere Corporation after the debacle following the formation of The Unteachables that resulted in so much senseless but enjoyable violence, eventually leading to the arrest and conviction of Everard Hinchcliffe and Liam Schiffrin on charges of conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit kidnapping, conspiracy to commit conspiracy and conspiracy to commit commitment.

When Sir Crispen took control of the reins of The Big Top, the organisation that he treasured so much was in tatters. Betrayal was rife throughout its corridors – even John Smith, his most valued and trusted agent had betrayed him. Fingers were being pointed everywhere – at buildings, at priceless works of art, at bars, at signposts, at the signs on signposts, at flash cars with hot chicks in them, at traffic lights, at mental institutions and at windows where men in raincoats could see naked women getting out of the shower. Even the agents working for Frontiere were pointed at. Everyone in New Zealand, it appeared, was pointing at something or someone. In no time at all pointing at things reached epidemic proportions and something had to be done about it – and quickly. A law was rushed through parliament banning the act of pointing and making it an arrestable offence for anyone caught doing so. Within days several hundred teachers had been arrested for pointing at their whiteboards during lessons and the word point was removed from the New Zealand Dictionary of Big Words (Second Edition), along with the vowels a, e, i, o and u.

It was a bad time for Frontiere – nobody trusted them, least of all themselves.

Fortunately Sir Crispen had a core of people he could rely on – namely Jim Friteuse and his wife Claire (who had changed their surname to Cook to avoid autograph hunters, press photographers and Egyptians, whilst Jim had started going under the more formal name of James), Emily Yip and the British born Peter Perkins aka I-Think-Therefore-I-Am-Man.

George Friteuse had retired by then to Wellington where, with the proceeds of his late wife’s insurance policy, he bought out Possum Books and began publishing an array of unusual titles on a variety of subjects that, despite all the negative press they received and the fact that they were all collections of short stories, nevertheless became massive bestsellers. Strangely he himself had begun to write the kind of stories that his late wife had made such a glittering career out of - and which he hated. He published them as Possum Romance books under his wife's name, thus ensuring their success and, despite their trashiness, they flew off the shelves from the moment they hit the book stores.
 

The cover of Seduced by a McTavish by George Friteuse (under the pseudonym of his late wife).

He has, at present, written two sexually explicit historical romance novels, both containing laughably unrealistic female characters set in 18th Century Scotland. The first, Seduced by a McTavish, was quickly followed by its sequel, Ravished by a McTavish and they were lapped up by feminists and, more remarkably, the growing gay community of New Zealand, who thought that having both male and female characters dressed in skirts was a step in the right direction. He (or to be more precise, E.L. Friteuse) has declared that the whole story will be told over a four book series and although the next two titles in the series haven’t been announced yet, I have been reliably informed that they will be entitled Up the Duff by a McTavish and On the Social with a McTavish.
 

The cover of Ravished by a McTavish by George Friteuse (under the pseudonym of his late wife).

He never wrote another science-fiction book under the name of Elroy Hubble again, although he did use the pseudonym once more when he published The Possum Book of Sci-Fi Cheese Stories, crediting the discredited writer as merely selecting the stories contained within its covers. 

As George Friteuse's  literary career was taking off , the Frontiere Corporation's secret organisation decided to lay low until everything had died down – James resumed his post as Head Cheese Sniffer, while Claire secured a post at the Wongawonga School for the Unsuitable, where she taught washed-up TV chefs the art of cooking from cans, tins, jars, packets and hermetically sealed containers. Emily Yip opened a self-defence centre in Nikkinakkinori, where she spent her days beating people up even when they didn’t want her to, and Peter Perkins returned to the UK, working in the PR department of Arnold Chemicals in Buckinghamshire.

Although Frontiere was still ticking over with odd jobs here and there, it remained silent – and documented – until Sir Crispen received a phone call from an old friend – and that’s where everything stops dead.

For a six month period all records of the activities of The Big Top were thought to have been lost or destroyed.

And this is where I came in.

As an investigative journalist it’s my job to track down the untrackable, to make possible the impossible and to follow any lead, no matter how unfruitful it may turn out to be.

It was those seemingly unfruitful leads that led me to the door of George Friteuse and those odd titles he had been publishing. It was there that I discovered the true story of what happened during the months of April to September of 1991. The records had not been lost or destroyed as previously thought – but hidden.

Posing as an itinerant geography teacher with an unhealthy interest in steam locomotive numbers and Dungeons & Dragons war games, I eventually found what I was looking for. Tucked away in a collection of unconnected titles the story of those dark months began to show itself. They were not obvious at first, but after endless hours of reading I found that each event, each twist of the tale, was contained in a seemingly innocent short story in each of the books. All I had to do was find them and put them in chronological order so that the whole story could be unravelled.

It took me a year to complete my laborious task but now I have it and I can share it with you – if, that is, you are willing to come along for the ride.

It starts with a wasp.

 

This was taken from the introduction to The Man Who Read Books

by Bingley Bennet.