The Flubb Investigates

Product Description In volume one of the trilogy 'The Adventures of the Flubb' The Flubb had barely had time to adjust to his comfortable new life as ‘word taster’ for a novel dictionary project when he found himself whisked away by Scotland Yard. The task for which he has been seconded turns out to be to give his opinion on an ambiguous suicide letter that had fallen into the hands of the police in connection with a suspected murder case. A theatre critic has been found stabbed to death in his own drawing room and his actress wife – who penned the letter – has disappeared. Certain suspicious words have been underlined in the letter by the forensic experts and now – snipped out – they are being detained in holding cells below the Yard for interrogation. In the middle of the Flubb’s examination of the renegade words they manage to break out and scatter. This results in a nerve-wracking chase across the English landscape accompanied by the manic sergeant Jenkins, in an attempt to bring them back to their cells... About the Author Michael Fortescue gained his bachelor's degree as well as his master's degree in Slavic languages and literatures from the University of California, Berkeley, before going on to earn a doctorate in linguistics from the University of Edinburgh. A world traveler, Fortescue taught English in Japan and France before moving to Denmark as a researcher and lecturer in Arctic languages, from where he was able to conduct fieldwork in Greenland, Canada, Alaska, and Siberia. After many years working as a professor of linguistics, Fortescue recently retired and moved to England, his birthplace, with his wife. The author of numerous academic books and articles, he has also written short stories and verse, as well as 'Ujarak', a novel in Danish, 'The Domain of Language', a humorous introduction to linguistics, and, most recently, 'The Evolution of the Flubb', a lighthearted work filled with wordplay and linguistic humor.