"It was a nightmare," laughs Tokyo-based author David Peace of a recent trip to Paris to promote the French version of his most successful novel, "The Damned Utd."
A fictionalized account of Brian Clough's tumultuous 44-day reign in 1974 as manager of Leeds United Football Club, "The Damned Utd" has not been out of the top 100 hundred best-selling paperbacks in Peace's native England since publication in 2006. Two years on, and its author is still dragging himself around the world promoting it, although Peace first made his name almost a decade ago with four crime novels known collectively as the Red Riding Quartet — in part based on the Yorkshire Ripper murders — and his recent book, the historical crime fiction "Tokyo Year Zero," is his most acclaimed to date.
But back to Paris.