Bad to the Bone is a surreal comedy firmly rooted in the technicalities of one of the world's most commercialised sports: cycling. Its concerns are those of the late twentieth-century affluent nations, health and exploitation, drugs and sanity, and the significance of the things in which we invest so much abstract energy: sport, bodily allure and the lust for achievement. Akil Saenz is beautiful, cinnamon gold, delicately muscled, and the greatest cyclist the world has ever seen. He is about to realise this greatness in a sixth and unprecedented win of the Tour de France when Mikkel Fleischman, the doctor of a rival team, appropriates his certain victory by mysterious means. Saenz is beaten year after year by inferior riders whose inordinate physical strength is accompanied by terrible mental deterioration, terminating in murders each with its unique grotesque aesthetic. Eventually, on top of Mont Ventoux, the choice is put to Saenz. Will he submit totally to Fleischman in return for brief, climactic glory? AUTHOR: James Waddington is a playwright based in the North of England who divides his time between writing and cycling. Bad to the Bone is his first novel.
