The Midlife of Dudley Chalk

Following a near-fatal flying accident, Dudley Chalk is placed in a medically-induced coma. Before being taken to hospital, while still lying broken and tangled in the material of the paraglider he so recently failed to fly, another version of Dudley appears. The new version of Dudley watches dispassionately the scene unfolding before him, then enters a world of his own. As one Dudley is taken to hospital, the other finds himself in a new and challenging life. And so begins the Midlife of Dudley Chalk. He exists as two versions of himself - one a man close to death in a hospital bed, and the other a fledgeling Private Investigator, looking for a missing person in the depths of a forest where crimes have been committed over the centuries, where ghosts and UFOs are frequently seen, where other lives come back to haunt him. There is a girl in both of Dudley's realities. In one, Judy Cantell is a patient in the bed next to his - no more than a corpse with a slim chance of life. In the other she is the vibrant light of a near death experience and may be, quite literally, the girl of his dreams. Dudley's love for this girl is tested to the limit when both of his realities cross over. In the world of a failed flying machine, Dudley and Judy are just broken people. Only the case of a missing man, a man who may or may not be real, can put these two people together again.