Why isn't Bakker super-famous?

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"Disciple Manning is able to recall every conversation, meeting and feeling he has ever had, making him an extremely dangerous private investigator. When a young woman disappears from a religious cult, her parents turn to Manning for help. Manning accepts, but with a chilling sense of foreboding.

"Heading into the heart of the cult, he encounters its beguiling leader, obsessed with the idea that the world is a fantastical theatre, in which we merely act out our roles, ignorant of our true existence beyond; a belief he is intent on protecting, at any cost. Manning's investigation soon leads to clashes with the cult's unsettling belief systems and leaves him fighting for survival and elusive answers. "

Scott Bakker's PI tale is another vehicle for his unsettling worldview. Intelligence, energy and conviction crackle through every inventive sentence. I turn to Bakker with relief after reciting yet another chapter of Lee Child's "Killing Floor" (read to Clare). In comparison, Lee Child is pedestrian, leaden, formulaic, clunky and cheap.

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On Amazon, a one-star review of genius - from Deckard:

"I'm Jack Reacher," I said

"Really?" he said

"Yes," I said looking in the mirror at my brown hair, blue eyes, and rough rugged looking face.

"Jack Reacher?" he said, "The man who had an American father and French mother that married in Korea and moved around a lot so he mostly grew up in american airbases, and naturally entered into the force himself, became a major then was made redundant with severance pay and is now struggling to ingratiate himself back into society?" he said again.

"Yes," I said.

He steepled his fingers for the fourth time. I noted his hands. They were good hands. They were Textbook hands. They knew their way around a gun. But he wasn't here to shoot guns, he was here to ask me lots of questions about plot and characterisation.

"So," he said. "you know what happens now right?" He said.

"Yes," I said, "We have to have a massively wooden conversation involving as many 'saids' as possible."

"Yes," he said, "all the saids." he said, "One said after another said until there's so many saids, that this reads like an eight year old's English assignment."

"Oh," I said noticing his hair. It had a textbook parting. It was hair that had seen a lot of action, and not all of it good. This was hair that had endured all the hardships of growing up as a young black male in a predominantly white neighbourhood, the struggle for promotion through the ranks, and a difficult relationship with his mother.

I stood up, walked to the table, grabbed a cup from the pile of cups, put the cup down on the table surface, took a spoon, put it into the coffee, dropped the coffee into the cup, took the hot kettle, poured some water onto the coffee, picked up the milk jug, poured a small amount of milk into the coffee, grabbed the spoon, put it into the cup, stirred it several times, then put the spoon down, picked up the cup and walked back to the desk and sat back down in the seat.

"You want one?" I asked.

"No thanks," he said, "I don't want to die of boredom before we get to the end of this scene," he said. He looked angry. He clenched his fist. It was the kind of fist that could hit someone really hard in the face.

I had to think quick. Had to think about exactly what else I needed the readers to know through my limited first person perspective. Then it came to me. I wrote a short note on a piece of paper and passed it under the table where none of you idiots could see.

"Oh yes," he exclaimed reading it quickly, "that reminds me," he said, "tell me all about why you walked fourteen miles down a road," he said," in the rain," he said, "with no money, credit cards, ID, or pants." he said

But it was too late. The reader had thrown my book off a ferry. On fire.

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"Killing Floor" has 2,598 reviews on Amazon.co.uk.

"Disciple of the Dog" has 4.

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Diogenes of Sinope (fourth century BC)

"It was this determination to follow his own dictates and not adhere to the conventions of society that he was given the epithet "dog," from which the name "cynic" is derived. As to why he was called a dog, Diogenes replied, "Because I fawn upon those who give me anything, and bark at those who give me nothing, and bite the rogues."

The quote with which Bakker starts his book. His protagonist is thus named and the book titled.

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I have now completed "A Dance With Dragons: Part 2 After The Feast (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5)".

Now in the (very long) queue for "The Winds of Winter".