Looking For Lady

About the Book

Looking For Lady takes up where Dennis Apperly's first novel Wasteground leaves off - at the funeral of The Professor, in the cathedral.

They are all there - Midnight Sam, Scots Robby, Fen, Nobby and Splodge and Brian Davies, to name but a few - as Bishop John leads the huge congregation in a poignant farewell to the city's best-loved tramp.  

After the funeral, life on the wasteground goes on much as before, although Midnight Sam - who regarded the late street-drinker as his personal responsibility - is not the same since The Prof's death. Not only does he miss his friend, but he misses the vulnerable Lady Jane, who has been whisked 'up north' by the violent Blacklock.

With not altogether welcome assistance from cronies old and new, Midnight embarks upon a chaotic mission to find the woman he slowly begins to realise he is in love with.

The lovable down-and-out soon makes a remarkable discovery: find Lady Jane and he finds Midnight Sam.

Meanwhile, Lady makes a remarkable discovery of her own - a discovery which changes her life and the life of Midnight Sam forever.

Looking for Lady is more than a bitter-sweet love story with a difference. It is an Odyssey of hope for two seemingly hopeless individuals.

Against a background of intermingled tragedy and comedy, the book demonstrates how it is possible for society's so-called misfits to rise triumphantly above the wasteground and proves that love really can conquer all.

About the Author

Dennis Apperly was born in Gloucester in 1945 and educated at King’s School.
When he left school he worked as an insurance clerk for two years before handing in his resignation and hitchhiking to Istanbul, backpacking and camping for several months.
Upon his return to the UK he worked as a van salesman for a soft drinks company, a barman and a bank cashier before emigrating to South Africa.
He joined the South African Press Association in Johannesburg as a reporter in 1970 and travelled extensively throughout southern Africa before returning to his home country two years later.
Dennis worked on a number of newspapers, including the Bristol Evening Post and the Birmingham Post, and was appointed launch editor of the Gloucester Express in 1985.
During his editorship he organised a campaign to raise funds for a beleaguered town in Darfur, western Sudan, and delivered the relief aid personally after a three-week convoy across the desert.
The Aid for Africa campaign won a national newspaper award.
After freelancing for a couple of years, he joined Gloucestershire Media in 1996 and became crime reporter on The Citizen, an evening newspaper.
Besides writing novels and poetry, Dennis is a keen cyclist.
Looking for Lady is his second novel - a sequel to Wasteground - and he is currently working on a third in the trilogy, Quiet Waters.
He has also written a crime thriller - The Devils Within - which he plans to get published next year.
He has a grown-up son Laurence, an accomplished musician.

Dennis lives in Cheltenham with his second wife Mary, an advice worker for a homeless charity.