A third chapter emerges

This morning I received a manuscript in the post. At first I thought it may be a new literary masterpiece from one of the award-winning authors who I serve as an agent. It wasn't.

Rather more excitingly, it is the third chapter of Dan Reilly's latest action-packed adventure, The Secret Syndrome.

Enjoy. It is inconceivable that you won't.

Chapter 3

Three nights later, Strong sat in his study, nursing a whisky cocktail and procrastinating. The events at the museum still played out in his mind like a mental film. Who was the mysterious woman?

The question remained unanswered.

The professor stood and walked silently over to his favorite spot at the window, overlooking the shadowy bay and the darkness outside. Jon Splendid was in intensive care: despite Strong's best efforts, the knife had punctured one of the curator's lungs and his life hung by a thread, balanced on a knife edge. Strong's massive hand obscured his face like a giant face-placenta for a moment as he tried desperately to maintain his composure.

He felt uneasy. It was not in his nature to be perplexed. He sipped his whisky delicately, swirling the liquor round his mouth: vintage, 20 years' aged in a cherry oak cask. At least the drink's still good, he thought.

Strong was expecting a visit any moment from his assistant, Janice Wolf. Despite her painful injuries, Ms Wolf had agreed to visit the professor and help him with the case. After all, she had had first contact with the hooded figure.

But only if they are one and the same! thought Strong suddenly. Could there be a clandestine society of hooded figures? Was the mystery of runes part of something much larger, with social and theological implications and consequences?

Placing this revelation to one side for a moment, Strong began to plump up the sofa cushions in anticipation of Ms Wolf's arrival. He swung his wrecking-ball fists at each feather pad in turn getting more and more strong with each swing. It felt good to release his aggression in this way.

After two-to-three minutes of this activity, he stopped.

He was glad that Ms Wolf was coming to his manor house despite her grievous injuries. To capitulate and visit her on the ward would be a sign of weakness. He just hoped that she didn't want anything to eat as he had used the majority of his fresh ingredients in a beef salad which he had eaten for lunch.

Suddenly, the door-bell rang.

Strong walked down the lavishly decorated hall, his feet sinking into the royal blue carpet. He had a bad feeling, and he knew to trust his gut feeling was normally a good thing to do. So he slowed before he reached the door and peered through the fish-eye spy hole which he had had installed for just such an occasion but never actually used. Fleetingly he thought that perhaps it had been fitted the wrong way around, as so often happens in clichéd films, but this was not the case.

Through the viewer he could see the lovely Ms Wolf, wearing a large brown coat with a mink-lined hood. Although taken aback for a moment, Strong decided that the hood was acceptable in spite of his conservationist stance as ultimately humans are above minks in the food chain.

Ms Wolf looked pale, but it was undoubtedly chilly outside. In fact, there were icicles hanging from the trees. It must be freezing! Strong deduced. He opened the door to welcome her into the warm embrace of his home.

Without warning, Ms Wolf fell face-first onto the welcome mat!

In horror, Strong saw that there was a knife sticking out of her back with a note attached. He was horrified. He stepped over her body as if avoiding a landmine and quickly glanced left then right when he was outside of the house. But he couldn't see anyone so he went back inside the house.

Professor Strong checked Ms Wolf's pulse: nothing. Damn! He smashed his fist against the hallway wall, shaking the house's very foundations.

His grief numbed the physical pain.

Bending down, Strong slowly pulled the note free of the blade. He studied it closely in the low light. On it, written in a tidy black scrawl, was written:

The seven runes of Ragnarok
The seven lives that time forgot
The secret syndrome; an open door
So Jesus Christ may live once more

Strong's eyes widened as he realized the implications of the riddle. Ms Wolf's body forgotten for a moment, he leapt cat-like into the study and began scribbling notes furiously with a biro because he couldn't find his laptop.

Larry's Life Lesson of the Week

There were actually two lessons:

1) If your partner has cancer, act like a complete dick until they go away. Better yet, let them think someone has just gone down on you and they'll get out of your life ASAP.

2) Avoid kissing someone who's just given your friend a blow job, or you'll get second hand semen on your face.

Magic Youth Pills

Who knew a person could regress so much in age? Wei and Dong decided that instead of getting the usual botox or a face lift, they would try out an herbal pill created by the Great Jing Jang Jong of China's Shartang province. Below you will see evidence of their amazing transformation from old, dying, and pooping in their pants, to young, alive, and still pooping.

Wei and Dong before taking the amazing herbal pill from the Great Jing Jang Jong of the Shartang province:


Wei and Dong AFTER taking the amazing herbal pill from the Great Jing Jang Jong of the Shartang province:

Neil Patrick Harris

How I Met Your Mother has an irritating laugh track, feels incredibly dated and shouldn't be my cup of tea at all.

But Neil Patrick Harris makes me laugh every time he speaks.

"WEAR A SUIT"

TGI Friday!

My friends and I are going to have a heck of a time tonight. We might even go to TGI Friday's! As our good friend Dan Reilly says, the best times to be had involve ladies, whiskey, and pleasure.

Reeboks and Chilli

This morning I put on my favourite black Reeboks, last season’s AIG United shirt, and brand new track bottoms that my mum bought me. She said she wanted some crisps from the corner shop, so she gave me two quid and I went on my way. Walked passed Jimmy. He was hunched over a broken bicycle, said some tosser beat him up for his Torres shirt.

“Why the hell are you wearing a Torres shirt around Radcliffe?” I asked him. It didn’t make any sense.

" ‘Cos I like her. She’s beautiful."

When I told Jimmy that Torres is really a man, and not the first ever woman to play for Liverpool, he started to cry.

Poor little Jimmy. The most confused chav in Greater Manchester.

So I gave him my brothers old United shirt and he got Berbatov’s name written on the back.

“So you like Berbie, eh?”

“Yeah, she looks pretty in her headband,” Jimmy smiled

Royston Vasey meets New Jersey

If the British lads known as The League of Gentlemen were to welcome an American visitor to Royston Vasey, it would definitely have to be Debra Kanippleburger. Watch John Roberts in the hilarious video posted below:

The Secret Syndrome, Chapter 2

Hi, your friend and author Dan Reilly here. I just wanted to say how pleased I am by the response to the first chapter of The Secret Syndrome. Since posting it at this blog I've received a piece of fan mail, as you can see in a previous entry here, and also some preorders for the book.

Thanks to everyone who has emailed me (you know who you are) and thanks to those who haven't emailed me but read the chapter, even if you didn't enjoy it. Perhaps you'll like this one better!

What's that?

Yes, you heard right. Chapter 2 is here, right now, completely unbridged and completely radical. Get ready to be stunned because it's stunning!


Chapter 2

The Decatur Museum, one of the oldest museums in America, having originally been built in 1256 by native Red Indian chief Water Dripping and fashioned from earthenware and dung before being repossessed by the US government in 1912 as part of the controversial native American landgrab initiative depicted particularly evocatively in J. R. Miller's 'Red Sun Rising', was cavernous. Professor Strong's footsteps echoed frequently throughout the marble hallways. Shouldering his way through gaggles of tourists, he shot passing glances at the exhibits on display. He smiled inwardly, knowing that he was responsible for many of the artifacts having found their way to this museum.

As Strong strode passed the patrons, many of them gazed at him, aware of the powerful hands hanging at his sides and overawed by the brilliant mind that resided within his head.

Rounding a corner, Strong grinned and tossed his mane of auburn hair back casually.

He had seen a friend.

The museum's curator, Jonathan Splendid, was renowned for his love of good wine, good food and good women. Fortunately for Strong, his experience in these areas was surpassed only by his encyclopedic knowledge of ancient history.

Fortuitously, Splendid specialized in ancient Nordic runes.

"Ernest!" the rotund expert cried loudly and happily, seeing the professor approach. "To what do I owe this pleasure!"

"Well, Jon," began Professor Strong, "I think I may need to pick those brains of yours one more time."

"One more time eh?" Splendid's eyes twinkled like fairy lights at Christmas. "I thought you said that last time!"

The two men laughed as only two friends can laugh.

This persisted for a matter of moments.

Then, the laughter subsided and Strong turned serious. He produced a sheet of A4 paper on which he had had the foresight to copy the runes which had been branded on Ms Wolf's fragile and petite form. The paper was recycled as Strong was a keen conservationist.

Passing it to the curator, Strong said, "I need to know more about these shapes, Jon. Think you can help?"

Splendid studied the paper carefully, stroking his carefully trimmed auburn beard in the manner of one studiously deep in thought. Strong waited patiently, flexing his shovel-like hands and watching a small child eat an ice pop clumsily. He smiled whimsically. He would like to have children someday.

"Ernest," began Splendid, "where did you see these?" The tremor in his voice made it shake violently. "You see, if I am not mistaken, these are the sacred lost runes of—"

Suddenly a sharp knife, perhaps thrown from some considerable distance, struck Splendid in the chest!

The curator cried out in shock and agony, falling to the ground and dispersing a nearby group of tourists. Strong spun around quickly, searching the gloom for the perpetrator.

There!

A shadowy hooded figure darted behind one of the tall marble columns. Strong could hear the squeak of rubber of marble floor and knew instinctively that the hooded figure was wearing sneakers as he had spent some time whilst at Cambridge studying the effects of varying shoe-types on different surfaces with particular regard to sound and friction.

"Stop!" he yelled, and then leapt from his fallen comrade in pursuit of the shadowy figure in the dark.

The figure didn't stop. Strong hurled himself forward, his years as a college athlete were behind him but he still played squash every day and ran marathons. He knew every corridor and part of the museum but soon found himself in a room he had never been in before.

Empty display cabinets lined the stark walls and somewhere up ahead footsteps echoed.

The assailant!

Strong was gaining on the man. His thigh muscles ached, more from excitement than exertion. But he couldn't enjoy the moment too much. His friend had seemed mortally wounded and he would have to attend to that matter shortly. But for now the thrill of the chase was overcoming him and he let out a whoop.

His exultant cry echoed and bounced off the walls. There were no doors in the room except the one he had entered by but it was not lit and had only one high window so was dark. The figure could be hiding in any of the numerous shadows.

Strong's clenched fists were like hammerheads hanging at his sides. Cords of muscle rippled beneath his shirt, which was tan. He had been a junior champion prizefighter in his youth and though it was some years behind him he had never lost his speed or strength because he worked out every day in the private gym at the back of his property, which he had installed so that he could stay in shape.

This shadowy interloper wouldn't have expected curators and academics to fight back, Strong reckoned to himself, but he was in for a massive surprise.

"Come out and fight like a man!" Strong bellowed, causing the glass in the display cases to resonate dramatically.

To his surprise the figure stepped from the shadows, the hood of the cloak obscuring the face. The cloak hung to the ground so it also concealed the rest of the figure but Strong could see a few Indian throwing knives and a pouch attached the waist.

Poison? Thought Strong, thinking of the pouch. He had heard of assassins coating knives in it and then throwing them at people to poison them, which then killed the victim.

Splendid would need help sooner than he had anticipated.

"I said fight me like a man!" He rolled up his sleeves, revealing acres of taut muscle.

The figure threw back its hood, "I would, Professor Strong, but as you see I am incapable."

A woman!

Her curly raven black hair, released from the hood, sprang outwards like a Rorschach ink blot, filling Strong's mind with confusing desires. He shook his head. It was no spell (Strong didn't believe in them) but it was just as dangerous. The woman was the most beautiful he had ever seen, despite her murderous apparel.

Her ruby lips parted. "You did not expect to face a woman." She threw her head back, the line of her chin perfect, and laughed mockingly. "What will your response be?"

Before Strong had time to respond, the dark beauty threw a knife at him, her hand moving faster than he would have believed possible. But Strong was faster. He rolled to one side, a little move from his Special Ops training, and when he looked up she was gone.

Strong looked in every shadow but there was no trace.

Impossible. He thought, frowning for the first time that day. But there must be an explanation. The pouch – not filled with poison at all. That would have been in a vial. Of course! The solution was obvious. The pouch had been filled with a mixture of powders that caused smoke to be emitted when thrown, a technique used by ninjas. The woman had used the confusion to cover her escape in this fashion.

Strong looked around. There was a definite thin layer of smoke in the room that no one else would have noticed. It did not explain where she had gone though.

Perhaps right by him and out the door. Once she removed the cloak no one would suspect a woman of being the killer and she could leave the museum without being questioned.

Strong slammed his right fist into his left palm, the thud echoing loudly through the now silent chamber. He found the knife she had thrown and investigated it. Definitely Indian, as he had first thought, but she was as pale as the moon. And how was this linked to Nordic runes?
He ran back to Splendid, grabbing a first aid kit from an office on the way. Even if there had been no poison, the knife may have severed an artery and if that was the case, Strong would need all of his medical training to save the man who had been like a father to him since his father died.

Fan Mail for Dan Reilly!

Hi Mr Reilly,

It sounds like a real treat! I can't wait to read your book. It sounds like an adventure, and I have loved adventure books ever since I was 13! People tell me I'm disabled mentally, but I am really a good reader.

Stay STRONG,

Tubbs

The Gang's Lesson of the Week

Alongside Larry's lesson of the week, here's what I learned from the first episode of season five of It's Always Sunny in Philadelipha.

Good realtor/bad realtor teams are as effective as good cop/bad cop teams, and threatening to murder a man and forcibly make love to his wife is the best way to sell him a house.

Readers of Damn Fool can be the first to read the opening chapters of the new thriller from noted Mancunian author, Dan Reilly. While his prose style is often compared to the chart-topping writers of today, it is Reilly's plotting that really sets him apart. Where others are derivative, he is innovative and where other writers pack in half the action, Dan Reilly packs in double the action.

More chapters will be posted over the coming weeks, building up to the book's global launch on November 22nd. If you like what you see, be sure to let Dan know at reillydan@hotmail.co.uk.

The Secret Syndrome

By Dan Reilly

Chapter 1

It was the thick of night. Professor Strong watched the shadows creeping around him. They were dark.

Why has my lovely assistant, Janice Wolf, not called, the results were due moments ago, he thought heavily.

Pushing back his dark brown mane with one of his large hands, Professor Strong peered out of the window of his seafront New England manor house that he had inherited from his father who died in mysterious circumstances while mapping the Devil's Rock, a small island just off the coast of Malta, which is a small island once, and maybe still, inhabited by Templars.

The weather was dark.

A hailstone the size of a rock struck the window but Professor Strong didn't wince. He'd seen worse. And laughed in the face of it.

His Nobel Prize caught the light of the moon and gleamed brightly. He chuckled to himself. That old thing. He clasped his large hands behind his back. They were like granite, hard and solid.

If the people who respected my public work knew of my private endeavours they would be amazed and award me more than trinkets. He chuckled again, the sound booming in his broad chest. Professor Strong was not arrogant. He had saved the world twice.

A flash of lightning lit up the sky.

The phone rang and Strong grabbed the receiver in the dark, not needing to switch on the light to locate it because he knew the layout of the room well because it was his study and he was often there writing books or poring over ancient maps.

"Ms Wolf?" He said, expectantly, the slightest of tremors in his voice betraying the fact that he loved her above all else in the world except his work and the memory of his dead wife, who had died.

"No, you colossal fool. Ms Wolf is..." A pause during which Strong, swift-minded, began to trace the call using a device attached to his phone that he had attached to his phone for just such occasions. "Indisposed."

"What have you done to her, you black-hearted fiend!"

The call is coming from inside the house, Strong thought to himself, studying the triangulation of the signal. This house!

"Oh. You'll see soon enough. You'll soon see." A click.

Strong shook the phone angrily, as if throttling a man angrily.

The intruder must have been upstairs. He took a torch from his desk drawer but then decided he would rather use the element of surprise and put the torch back into his desk drawer and went upstairs silently, padding like a silent puma even though he was wearing dress shoes.

A light shone beneath his own bedroom door. He crept toward it, still as quiet as a feline, and placed his ear to it.

Nothing.

Strong stood and kicked open the door, his powerful legs reducing the sturdy oak to splinters.

Inside the room, Janice Wolf was tied to the bed, her body tatooed with strange runes. She was alive. But barely.

A dark shape, perhaps a figure in a black cloak, jumped out of a window laughing evilly. The window had already been open and must have been the point of entry.

There was no time to think about that though. Strong ran to Janice and untied her.

"What...happened?" She asked, her delicate features trembling softly.

Strong stroked her flaxen auburn hair and resisted the temptation to kiss her smooth white forehead. Her green eyes fluttered. Perhaps she wants to be kissed, he thought but shook the fantasy from his mind.

"Don't worry. Sleep now." He examined the runes before pulling the featherdown duvet over her fragile but brave form.

Nordic. Just like the symbol on father's dead face when they found him on that bleak rocky shore.

Strong walked down the stairs back down to the darkened study. Thoughts raced through his mind and jostled for position. What could this all mean?

He didn't know, but as he stared out the window at the angry sea, he knew that he would know soon enough.

Larry's Life Lesson of the Week

Season 7 of Curb Your Enthusiasm premiered on September 20th. What did I learn? That not even cancer should prevent a person from being with their true love!

The next episode airs September 27th on HBO.

a message from monty rockwood...

Sometimes I can't remember a damned thing because my mom had amnesia when I was born.

DAMN FOOL team of scribes! We wore our Sunday best!!!

"I laughed so hard today, I nearly soiled myself!" -- Adam Smithston (far left)

Welcome to DAMN FOOL

Please stay tuned, my good sirs. The sober ramblings of traumatized souls shall occupy this space...so relax with a drink and a shiny new pipe. Farmers not allowed.