Summary

Private Investigator Sam Dyke turns down a job that would require skills he doesn't have - patience, computer-literacy, tact. Then he finds the skills he does have - tenacity, aggression, street-smarts - are exactly the ones needed for his next case - hunting down a cold-blooded murderer who seems to know what his every step will be.

To solve the case Sam must negotiate with his ex-wife, cement a relationship with a new love, unravel an office-based financial fraud and fight off an arrogant murderer armed only with a pen-knife. Altered Life is fast-paced, bitterly comic and introduces a tough new English private eye who knows what he wants and, usually, how to get it.

"Keith Dixon has taken the classic American cop-turned-private eye mystery story with all its American-style action but given Sam Dyke a British intricacy by combining the wit, intelligence and complexity of the likes of Colin Dexter's "upper-crust" Morse with the working class background and the reining in of the "madness" with method of Morse's partner, Lewis."
Belinda D'Alessandro

Extract

+++I heard a sudden shuffle of feet behind me and on instinct moved to my left. Something heavy glanced off my shoulder and I turned to see Brian standing with a square marble ashtray in his hands, his eyes wide open, a fleck of spittle on his bottom lip. He began to raise the ashtray again so I stepped forward and popped him with a medium strength punch on the point of his jaw. He staggered and fell backwards awkwardly into a metre-high roll of bubble wrap, which unfurled a tongue beneath him and exploded with a thousand little exhalations as he fell to the floor. He dropped the ashtray and raised a hand to his jaw.
+++‘Ow! You bastard, I’ll get you for that.'
+++‘Sit still, Brian,’ I said.
+++I turned back to Derek. He had collapsed and was sitting on a plastic office chair. The rain outside came harder and drummed on the tin roof like an overture for his confession.
+++‘Well?’ I said. ‘Do we have to carry on with this nonsense?’