Emeritus Professor Michael Fortescue

The ill-tempered clavier Emeritus Professor Michael Fortescue

In this, the fourth volume in the trilogy 'The Adventures of the Flubb' (well, the Flubb never was much good at numbers!) our intrepid word-taster is called upon to retrieve a valuable hard drive that his technically minded colleague Derek has 'borrowed' from work and fitted into a grand piano. He had been tinkering for some time with a device that can turn keyboard music into speech and vice versa. A beautiful young Austrian lady contacted him, worried by the mute depression of her composer brother and hoping Derek's device would get him communicating with his piano and composing again. Derek saw her request as an excellent chance to test out his prototype and at the same time to bring in a bit of much needed cash to the company. The consequences of his ill-fated experiment soon prove alarming, however, with the piano and the composer (now in manic phase) becoming locked in furious musical combat. The young lady is at her wit's end and her other brother, an equally unstable artist who is perpetually squabbling with his twin, does not help the situation one bit, accusing him of undermining the painting of his masterpiece. Derek has no choice but to reveal to the Flubb what has happened and to beg him to try and sort things out. The Flubb's initial attempts to talk sense into both the composer and the piano are in vain. Events escalate alarmingly when it transpires that the piano has eloped at night with the sister, the device still installed inside it, and the Flubb is drawn into a wild chase in pursuit of the couple. This leads at first to a curiously expandable boarding house on the cliffs above Dover then across the channel to a frustratingly slow river cruise down the Rhine and the Danube to Austria. In Vienna he and the brothers become embroiled with a sinister grand piano mafia. Will the Flubb manage to retrieve the hard drive undamaged? Will his diplomatic skills be up to reuniting the three temperamental siblings? And what on earth will be the fate of a vile-tempered grand piano let loose in the Vienna Woods?