The Greatest Lie Ever Told – the story so far

Skvader - ornithological fraud.

by TomMckinney on January 16, 2012 · 0 comments

in Birding Western Palearctic

Confused as to what’s happened in the previous six chapters? Baffled by the most convoluted nonsensical plot ever dreamed up? Just landed here by mistake and got absolutely no idea what this is all about? Well here’s a synopsis of the story so far. Don’t worry, this whole ridiculous thing should hopefully be wrapped up in a few more chapters. And yes, you’re absolutely right: I really am an idiot.


The Greatest Lie Ever Told

by Morton Cubberd

The story so far…

Rancorous old dog Paddy Rogue divides his life between depressing bouts of nihilistic alcoholism and being a top notch CID detective with the Cotswoldshire force. He gets his results by breaking rules and tearing up the rule book and being all iconoclastic and rebellious and stuff. Rogue is landed with a new partner, the idealistic kid fresh out of uni and wet behind the ears Timmy Keen, and sent to investigate the murder of retired history professor Maurice Wagon.

Meanwhile up in Scotland on the Fife coast in Asstermowth, profoundly gifted rookie cop D.I Liz McAubrey visits the mortuary and discovers that the presumed drowning of local market trader Jock MacDogkennel is actually a vicious, cold-blooded murder when she finds a massive fucking kitchen knife sticking out of his chest. Soon Liz discovers that murdered MacDogkennel was a sad bastard birder, raking up memories of her own absent father who was also a fucked up twitcher. In MacDogkennel’s notebooks Liz finds a phone number to be called only in an emergency. The number goes straight to voicemail and a greeting by a mystery voice which sounds just like Rigsby in Rising Damp (“ooooohhhhh, Miss Joooooones”)

Back down in Cotswoldshire, Rogue sadistically tortures an elderly woman in order to learn more about Maurice Wagon, and establishes that Wagon was a sadsack birdspotter who was due to give a talk to Cotswoldshire Ornithological Society on the night he was battered to death with a cricket bat.

In Iceland, two men with cliched and idiotic names are preparing vagrant birds from the Arctic to be shipped into Britain. They behave in a manner which suggests that the author of this story is slightly xenophobic.

Due to her troubled relationship with her father, Liz McAubrey is taken off the MacDogkennel case, as her boss Tommy Colon fears that she’ll not do the job properly because she fucking hates bastard birders so much. She goes to meet her two friends working at Asstermowth mortuary only to discover they have been horrifically murdered and there’s shit and blood and brains and shards of bone all over the place. The kitchen knife has been removed from Jock MacDogkennel’s chest. McAubrey quickly corners a seven foot tall Russian female assassin called Kathinka Zemlinsky who wears a black leather Gestapo trenchcoat and likes eating Nando’s. Zemlinsky disarms McAubrey and batters her skull to pieces with her cricket bat. McAubrey is saved by paramedics who scoop her brain up off the floor and reassemble her head with sellotape, but as a result of the injury she develops Hyper Extraordinarily Gifted Profundity Syndrome, which makes her dead fucking good at being a detective.

Timmy Keen, despite trying to play by the book, soon comes to realise that Paddy Rogue is a masterful detective with extraordinary talents, and that good crime solving is based largely on fear, intimidation and vile misanthropy. Through further gut churning torture interrogation, the two detectives are given a clue: Maurice Wagon was preparing to blow open a secret about large scale ornithological fraud. Rogue and Keen pay a visit to Sir Wilkins Bramblebay, the world’s leading expert in ornithological fraud. Bramblebay and his butler Huggins relate the story of the Bristow Chapter, a secret organisation founded by taxidermist George Bristow and dedicated to duping thick-as-shit twitchers into believing that vagrant birds are actually real when the whole thing is just one massive porky pie lie. In fact, it’s The Greatest Lie Ever Told.

In Norfolk at Cley, an elderly man at the helm of the Bristow Chapter instructs his deadly assassin employee Kathinka Zemlinsky to “take care” of a number of people who are getting far too close to uncovering The Greatest Lie Ever Told. She is also told to pick up a shipment from the two heavily stereotyped Icelandic bird traffickers, and finally told that the old man is stepping down from the Bristow Chapter to make way for his son, who will now take care of all business.

Rogue and Keen find a link between Maurice Wagon and Jock MacDogkennel in Asstermowth, which also happens to be the town where Rogue cut his teeth as a rookie detective before his excessive violent conduct got him sent down to bullshit boring Cotswoldshire CID. Rogue and Keen make contact with Liz McAubrey and the three agree to work together in order to smash open the Bristow Chapter. Liz also pieces together that the mystery voice sounding just like Rigsby in Rising Damp belongs to Sir Wilkins Bramblebay’s butler, the elusive Huggins.

Kathinka Zemlinsky meets the two Icelandic men in Whitby harbour, but she soon susses out that the alleged Brunnich’s Guillemots are fakes. A violent battle ensues – Zemlinsky is shot in the throat but manages to escape before the police arrive and arrest the two Icelandic bird traffickers, who yet again behave in a manner suggesting that the author really does have a bit of a problem with people from Iceland.

Having just read that through, am I completely fucking mental?

PART 2 COMING SOON…

Back to beginning

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Tagged as: Detective Story, Greatest Lie Ever Told, Non-fiction, novel, tom mckinney

Article by Tom Mckinney

Tom McKinney has been birding for over 20 years and has birded on every continent, other than the continents he's not yet been to. He is famed for having found Britain's first Gray's Grasshopper Warbler and then waking up and realising it had all been a beautiful, beautiful dream. When not birding he enjoys going to Ladbrokes and writing short biographical entries about himself in a 3rd person voice.

Tom has written 49 awesome articles for us.

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