Don’t Get Mad Get Even by Colin Goodwin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Three point Five stars.
Don’t Get Mad Get Even is a jolly tale with a northern counties village cricket club setting. The storyline takes place during one last desperate season for the cricket club as they struggle to win a league cup and thus keep their club open. No win and the land gets turned over for housing.
A large cast of characters fill the pages in this comedy of errors punctuated with dry dark humour as more than one person sets out to sabotage the club and take advantage of their loss. From the couple who have just moved to a house on the green, the long suffering resident who boarders up his windows against the cricket ball, to the lad the team dropped and the greedy son of the landowner who hopes to take advantage of his invalid father.
This book would suit those who have been immersed in village cricket, especially readers who appreciate a bit of Lancashire style humour. It is a quick light read.
View all my reviews on Goodreads
Book Description
As the cricket season starts, so do the shenanigans…
Life is tranquil in the quintessentially English village of Throttle – until the local cricket team receives a devilish demand.
When industrialist and landowner Sir Alfred Bullock is laid up, his devious son Roland, devises a get-rich-quick scheme. He gives an ultimatum to the cricket club: win a trophy by the end of the season or we take back the ground you play on and sell it for development.
In a desperate attempt to win games and hold on to the pitch, the club enlists the help of a professional whose skills – to the delight of the local ladies – extend far beyond the cricket Field. Roland, together with an unscrupulous estate agent and two dodgy builders, hatches malicious plans to ensure the team loses its games. Meanwhile, village residents whose houses are devalued by being on the perimeter of the pitch take matters into their own hands to ‘fix’ the club’s failure…
Greed, scandal, tragedy and farce ensue as the cricket club fights for survival against increasingly dangerous sabotage…
Rosie Amber 