"I think my wife might be right. I am going slightly mad."
Hounded is an escape from the anxiety of reaching a half-century,
written during the pandemic of 2020 and into the spring of 2021, during
which comedy writer Vince Stadon experienced every film, TV, audio
drama, spoken word reading, documentary, stage play, pastiche, graphic
novel, animation, kids cartoon, and PC game version of The Hound of the
Baskervilles.
A quirky, funny and unique memoir about Spectral Hounds, Consulting
Detectives, panic attacks and way too many cats, Hounded is a
bewildered middle-aged man's silly odyssey through a binge experience of
every conceivable version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's celebrated novel.
As the world darkens and he gleefully immerses himself in the fiction of
the fog-drenched mystery, Vince Stadon undertakes a marathon of the most
famous Sherlock Holmes story of them all; he makes deductions, adopts
disguises, sends anonymous 'Beware the moor' letters to Canadians,
steals footwear, learns Sherlock Holmes's favoured martial art, and he
tracks the Hound across the melancholy moor during those dark hours when
the forces of evil are exalted.
Along the way, Vince remembers his childhood, tries to understand his
mysterious and troubled father, gets to grip with chronic anxiety, and
strives to keep sane and calm during a pandemic.
Written in tweets, poems, songs, extracts from proposed 80's Hollywood
blockbuster action films, prog rock lyrics, very silly stage plays, and
far too many irrelevant and irreverent footnotes*, Hounded is the
funniest book you'll ever read about a bloody big ghost hound that's
dogged a man all his life.
* A ridiculous number of footnotes.
