One Last Question

Peppered with barbed dialogue and pop cultural references, One Last Question is a blackly humorous story of friendship, loss and men ageing disgracefully.

Some secrets are carried to the grave. Others don’t make it as far.

Every year the Boys plan a weekend away. A weekend of drinking, laughter and piss-taking by the sea - it’s been a tradition of the six of them for as more years than they can remember.

Now, suddenly, the six has become five. Will – clever, funny, dependable Will - has died. In the months leading up to his death, Will plans the next Boys weekend, knowing he will be unable to be there with them. As always he researches the place, books the accommodation, and prepares his brainmelter quiz – the quiz that slots neatly into the drinking, laughing and piss-taking and which is the centerpiece to the annual weekend away.

Now, the remaining Boys assemble in the house by the sea in Dungeness that Will has booked for them. Already grappling with the grief of losing their friend, the Boys are dreading pressing play on the video, and when they do, their grief turns to horror as Will slowly reveals secrets about each of them in a series of increasingly provocative questions.

During their stay the group has become entangled with a volatile local steroid dealer and his abused sister and when he challenges the group once more, just as they face the fallout from the quiz, there are dramatic and disastrous consequences.

¬¬¬About the Author

Mike Pattenden is a freelance journalist with thirty years’ experience in newspapers and magazines, writing about music, sport and anything else that pays the bills. He is also the author of Last Orders At The Liars’ Bar, the official biography of Paul Heaton and The Beautiful South (pub. Orion). He is married with two grown-up children and lives in the ’burbs. Some say he is a misanthrope, others a cynic, but he is simply another disappointed romantic.