The Holiday, The Mystery of Men, The Power of Women and The Man Who Won...

In 1995 Simon and Schuster published Guy Bellamy’s ninth novel The Holiday. The author is on record as saying that this book is one of his personal favourites. It is an artfully-plotted story of what happens to an oddly-matched assortment of couples who find themselves simultaneously staying in the luxurious Carlton Hotel in Cannes. The characters are brilliantly-drawn, the story romps along at a terrific rate and, as always, the book sparkles with first-rate comedy.

Guy Bellamy’s tenth book, The Mystery of Men, was published in 1996. In 1999 the book was made into a television film for the BBC, starring Warren Clarke, Nick Berry, Neil Pearson and Robert Daws. The plot of The Mystery of Men is a sparklingly modern and racy twist on a ‘Tontine’ story: Four male friends agree to enter into an insurance syndicate which guarantees that three of them will share in a life insurance payout as soon as one of them dies. The oldest of them is still only forty five and all of them have good reason for wanting the payout to be sooner rather than later...

The Power of Women was published in 1997. Guy Bellamy had recently moved from Surrey to Glastonbury and he makes good use of the town both as a setting for the novel and as a key element in the storyline.

The Man Who Won  was published by Robert Hale in 2005. It is the story of a writer, Andy Devlin, whose life has always been a struggle. But when his debts spiral out of control and he's forced to sell his home to pay them off, Andy finds himself unable to afford a new place to live. By a malign quirk of fate, calamity strikes his two closest friends at the same time.

For the first time the three friends are split up. That is, until Brad has a

dramatic change of fortune and sets about buying a luxurious new home

in the country for a neighbourly reunion. But his astonishing act of

generosity will create more problems than it solves..

Paul Pickering, reviewing this book for the Sunday Express gave it five

stars and wrote: "Bellamy has produced another novel that is every bit as exciting as The Secret Lemonade Drinker...Bellamy has written one

of the funniest books on winning the lottery around and there is nothing

better than to curl up with a story where a massive win leads to misery and doom."