Bad to the Bone

By James Waddington

'Waddington employs a cheerful surrealism to convey the superhuman status of his cyclists and the designer violence of his killer. The encounters with death are funny rather than frightening and the narrator is omnipotent, stylish and amused. Waddington's descriptions of racing, and they are many and enthralling, have the rhythm and intensity of poetry. You're riding with your wheel an inch from the author's, carried along by the surge of the pack, normal life and normal people no more than a muted clamour on the roadside. It's exhilarating stuff.'
Joe Cogan in The Independent on Sunday

'Racy thriller in which top pros in the Tour de France become ensnared in a Faustian pact with a sports doctor who guarantees success but demands the ultimate price: their lives. Appeared in 1998, the year of the sport's biggest ever drug scandal... it still seems grimly apposite.'
William Fotheringham's Top 10 Cycling Novels in The Guardian

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1909232912
• ISBN13: 9781909232914
• Release Date: June 2016
• Publisher: Dedalus
• Length: 194 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 4.9" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

Solid as bone, fast as a time trial

A supremely intense book that is a fast read except for the convoluted, chemically induced prose that suggests that the pumped up state that drives people to sacrifice everything in pursuit of being the best --- ever. Be ready to re-read sections as you are caught off balance, without ever falling of the paceline of the mystery that unravels. The story has elements of cyberpunk in the pace and prose that the most hardcore Gibson or Stephenson fan will enjoy this, even in the absence of nothing more technical than a hyper-tricked out bicycle in a chapter about a stage that takes place in the velodome. An excellent introduction to the attraction of professional bicycling racing, the monotony and the glory or surviving. It also captures the team dynamics of professional cycling, that most are hard pressed to explain in an obviously individual sport. The author clearly knows his cycling history and peppers the story with vignettes that add color and tradition to the classic sport. The author has done his research and the extrapolation of advances in sports medicine seem plausible and frightening. A subplot involving a female detective is insufficiently developed but thankfully doesn't distract from the main story.If you have a cycling fan in your life, get this book for her or him right away.