Palace Pier

Keith Waterhouse

Former Resident of Embassy Court Brighton

Palace Pier

book cover photography by Georgia Kossifou

This is the story of Chris Duffy, a writer that usurps the manuscript of a famous novelist in a bid for fame at the Brighton Literary Festival.

The locations are a mixture of the genuine - the Theatre Royal, the Metropole and of course the Palace Pier - and the fictional 'I'm sure I know that place' pubs. In a haze of beer and vodka, worthy of Hangover Square, Duffy sets out to find a long lost manuscript by Mister Hamilton which he plans to claim as his own work in order to revive his career as a novelist. Unfortunately this one-hit-wonder author has not managed to write anything more than a pile of letters to the newspapers (mostly unpublished) in 40 years. His only concrete source of income is a bric-a-brac stall in the North Laine.
Trailing through a glittering assembly of wealthy writers, over-the-hill broadcasters and nymphomaniac publishing assistants at the Brighton Literary Festival, Duffy bitterly resents the fact that no-talent upstarts are being published while life is preventing him from getting started on his next best seller.