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Praised by comedian Helen Lederer, founder of Comedy Women in Print Prize, as "A curiously magical thriller with suburban subterfuge and sparkle."
Dawson's life is going nowhere. Out of work and nearly out of money, he is forlornly pursuing the love of Rachel Whyte. But Rachel is engaged to Pat Bootle, an apparently successful local solicitor who has appeared from nowhere.
Then, out of the blue, Dawson receives a job offer from his best friend, Alan Flannery, which involves him jumping on a plane to Australia to "await further instructions". But instructions about what?
This is the start of a frantic chase around south eastern Australia with half the local underworld, the police and the intelligence agencies of three countries trying to catch up with Dawson.
What is Flannery's game?
Why has Pat Bootle turned up in Australia?
Who is the beautiful but mysterious Lucy Smith?
What is the teapot's secret?
What has folk music got to do with anything?
And how do guns actually work?
Dawson's life will never be the same again.
About the author
Steve Sheppard was born in Guildford, the youngest by some distance of three brothers, and spent his formative years in the heart of the Surrey stockbroker belt, where he played a lot of sport (poorly), met a lot of people (friendly) and had a lot of jobs (of varying degrees of noteworthiness). He also appeared on stage in a number of amateur productions, whether anyone wanted him to or not. Disappointed at failing to meet any actual stockbrokers, he moved to West Oxfordshire over twenty years ago, where he now lives in a quintessentially quirky English village with his wife, son and the latest in a series of recalcitrant cats.
A Very Important Teapot is his first novel. The title came to him a quarter of a century ago but he did very little with it until early 2017 when, flying home from Australia, Steve decided that he would probably never find a better time to write the book he'd been thinking about, on and off, through all of life's normal and abnormal travails. So he did.
