Responsible for the content of this blog:
‘Secrets of Cupboard 55’ is a 143,000 word black literary legal comedy based on a true story. This is crime fiction with a difference. The two main characters, Leo Bloom and Carla Limoncello, stumble between marital crises and legal crises. Carla, a New York single mother to teenage Lita meets Leo Bloom, a womanising British schoolteacher after a whirlwind Internet romance. When their ill-conceived trans Atlantic marriage goes awry mother and daughter move out of their English matrimonial home for a trial separation in a place nearby.
Thereupon an out of sorts Lita, befriends classmate, sixteen-year-old Rebecca van Hiller, who is soon to be made homeless. Mother and daughter take in the charming child but get more than they bargain for. Mother, Carla, is left at her wits end as daughter, Lita, suddenly and mysteriously escapes back to New York.
In desperation Carla then snaps Leo out of his womanising spree to help disentangle and despatch the vile and manipulative unwanted waif, van Hiller.
But rather than alleviate the crisis a bumbling Bloom tries to tutor and tame van Hiller and falls hopelessly for her wiles. Through a series of flash backs and vicarious voyeuristic vacillations Bloom contorts himself into a frenzied sexual knot over the girl.
Disaster awaits the hapless schoolteacher when he discovers his stepdaughter has hatched a bizarre plot to take revenge on the heinous Hiller girl in a lesson she won’t forget.
Thereafter the book charts a bumbling Bloom's downward spiral of twists and turns as he is pursued by an overzealous police officer and faces a humiliating criminal trial. Denounced in his community as a paedophile luckless Leo must fight to save his reputation, his career, but above all his freedom.
The book echoes the wordplay of James Joyce and evinces the witty narrative and unrequited love depicted in Nabakov’s ‘Lolita.’ and addresses topical issues of Internet harassment, police corruption and those sexual taboos middle class readers find uncomfortable but compelling.
SUMMIT SHOCK
The second book in the series, already in development, is ‘Summit Shock,’ a factually based dramatisation of a female corrections officers epic legal battle to expose a conspiracy in the prison service to suppress her lawful claims to bring to justice the captain repeatedly raped and sexually abused her.
We offer these unagented works to you for consideration in the hope that you share our passion for bringing compelling literary crime fiction to market.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
J Daley O’Neal is 46 years old and for most of the year resides at Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. He is a graduate of the West Surrey College of Art & Design where he obtained a First Degree in Fine Art in 1983 and then subsequently completed his post-graduate studies qualifying as a high school teacher in 1985. He most notably won the WSCAD Creative Writing Award for Excellence for his Bachelor’s dissertation on James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses.’
For twenty years the author has taught in public school and colleges throughout England. Since 1998 J Daley O’Neal has been married to a New Yorker, a legal advocate and the couple live between homes in New York and Norfolk, England. In J Daley O’Neal 2004 successfully defended himself in a well-publicised criminal case. Since then he has assisted wife in her legal advocacy work in the American civil courts while pursuing his creative writing interests.
‘J Daley O’Neal’ enjoys writing about unrequited love, the criminal justice system and dares to apply his literary talents to contentious hot topics such unlawful police practices, sexual harassment and paedophilia.
