Wicked Game

About Wicked Game

Wicked Game is a fast paced pulp thriller, and was written before I developed the more humorous style you’ll find in the short stories on this site. Through writing the book, I learnt a lot about how to develop characters, and it’s made me feel worthy of preaching to anyone who will listen about the value of maintaining positivity and completing your first book, even finding a publisher proves incredibly difficult.

Wicked Game Book Jacket Teaser

Thirteen years ago, Jack Fox tried to exit the criminal organisation he worked for. Leaving proved impossible. He was framed and imprisoned. Now, on the day of his release, Jack finds himself drawn back to Moonlight Alley to face his past. Men in balaclavas are waiting for him in the shadows. They attack, knocking him senseless. Waking in a derelict warehouse, Jack finds he is a hostage at the mercy of terrorists. He isn't alone. Six other people share his predicament. The terrorists have sworn to kill one of the hostages each day until their demands are met. As events draw to an unexpected climax, Jack discovers why the terrorists involved him in their wicked game...

Buy Wicked Game by Christopher Fielden @ Lulu

You can buy Wicked Game in paperback or as a PDF download at Lulu. It's also available in Kindle format at Amazon. Links to the relevant pages on Amazon are at the top of this page.

Wicked Game Book Review

There are a few reviews of Wicked Game on Lulu, but I’ve pasted one that isn’t published anywhere else below. Admittedly, it’s written by a friend of mine called Luke, but if you read it, I think you’ll see it’s genuine and written from the heart. Previously, Luke had proof read the first chapter for me (which later became the prologue). I received this via email after he’d read the completed book.

Okay, first of all, I went into it knowing I would love the first chapter but thinking that at some point it would kind of disintegrate and I would be searching for nice things to say about it. I say this not because I doubted you but only because usually things that friends have sent me (unpublished, however) have gone that way, like one friend of mine who always has cool premises and then atrocious dialog and no idea how to write an ending that isn't exactly the ending you expected on page one. Et cetera.

That, my friend, is not AT ALL what happened with Wicked Game.

I am 100% serious when I say that I finished the last page about half an hour ago and still feel amped. I read this thing in record time and found myself wanting to get back to it when I was away from it, and now I want it to have been longer. I am fantastically bummed that you are a new author so I can't just order your next book first thing in the morning and be reading it by Wednesday.

I literally have nothing bad to say. At some point, I forgot you were the author. I mean that as a compliment. It was just a great read, that I would gladly have read if the name on the front were Joe Shmoe, the end.

Except that's not the end, because there's a lot of things I want to say specifically. First of all, Jack: I don't know how you made a rageaholic thug into a completely sympathetic figure with innate goodness, but you did. Then: Joshua. Normally I hate kids in books. Jurassic Park, I was hoping the kids would get eaten, please dinos, eat them kids! Alas those kids lived. Harding: Harding is your best character, I think. You have a real ruthless style with the hard-boiled cop chapters -- I was jealous.

There is a real kitchen-sink quality to this book. I admit in the early moments I was not sure it was all going to pull together, but o man. You throw all these balls up in the air and catch every one, and there is so much cool stuff -- like, you think you are being thrown into some kind of "Saw" puzzle, and then alongside that is the whole subculture of these fascinating assassins, and then the cop on their trail, and I really like the way Seth Hag only comes into focus gradually, so he goes from being shady mob boss to being Simon Cowell to being basically a Bond villain but way more serious than any of the actual Bond villains.

Then you have Craven's office and Griplett -- Jebus, I could SEE that hot iron session and I cringed, and I love the idea that Griplett's not "exactly" a prisoner -- and by then you are in Shadow Government territory, but between Griplett and later Agent Jack you have gone Stephen King's secret agency The Shop one better! And somehow it even feels completely in tune with our actual current events. You have walked a lot of fine lines really sharply and it's tense and FUN.

I got to the epilogue, too, and couldn't get through it fast enough, but sad also because then no more book -- and as it ended I thought, OH MY GOD: THIS IS AN ORIGINAL STORY!!!!

You better tell me right now if you're done with Jack and Harding so I am not looking forward for nothing.

And congratulations on a damn compelling book. Three all-out, top volume cheers,

Luke

Thank you, Luke, that’s the best review I’ve ever received. Unfortunately, my head is now so swollen that it has formed its own centre of gravity and is in the process of attracting its first moon.

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