The Naked Cellist

What could possibly go wrong at the Rutherford Arts Festival? Plenty apparently. Three deaths, a hit and run, blackmail and a drugged hip flask are just the start. Things start to go wrong when Eddie Searchfield is found dead beneath a painting of a naked woman playing the cello.The Festival is organised by a Council electrician whose experience is limited to playing lead guitar in a back room of a pub group and covered for the national media by a novice journalist whose brief stage career ended abruptly when funding was cut. The worlds worst orchestra, a blank canvas and an installation comprised of Council rubbish are the tip of a very large iceberg which DCI Winwood calls ‘one hundred and one of the world’s greatest artistic disasters’. Whilst artistic chaos reigns around him he has a series of unexplained accidents to investigate that he is sure are connected. He is trying to understand why Government funding is being poured into Rutherford to support an hitherto lack of any obvious local talent. He finds that a background of unrequited love and the English way of life are the solution to all of his problems. This is not for the lovers of John Constable but more for those who find enlightenment in the Turner Prize.