Fictional Town season ticket holder Craig Reddy is the central character in Banking on Reddy, a new novel written by Blues supporter Greg Butcher. Ipswich and Town games feature heavily as investigative journalist Reddy seeks out the truth behind a bank’s insolvency.
TWTD caught up with Butcher at last Friday’s 6-0 U21s victory over Cardiff and he told us all about the book: "It’s based in the UK in March 2009 when the stock market has collapsed.
"The book is about a financial journalist called Craig Reddy, he works for the Daily Courier in London, and he’s interested in an insolvent bank which has its headquarters in Ipswich, the Ipswich and Blackwater Bank. That’s his investigation.
"The book opens with the suicide of the CEO of the bank, so there’s a criminal investigation in parallel run by Detective Inspective Pauline Wright.”
He says the main protagonist and his friends are Blues supporters to give them greater depth: "Reddy is a characterised as a Town season ticket holder, along with his two fictional friends Edmund Burleigh and Simon Farley.
"For the purpose of achieving authenticity of the story's characters and the settings, I thought it important that the readers see aspects of their social lives, not just their professional lives.
"That's one reason for Craig Reddy and Simon Farley having a friendship dating back to their school days. Staying friends down the years, notwithstanding their going separate ways professionally, is because they are both dedicated football, and Town, fans. Even if the quality of the entertainment on offer has been threadbare in the last few years.
"Like true friends, in the book, Farley and Reddy share with each other their respective troubles and strife. Equally, they act to help each other.
"Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I think those characteristics are the true basis of friendship and I wanted that as another baseline of authenticity against which the reader could then assess the criminal machinations of some of the book's other principal characters.”
Butcher says his own support of the Blues goes back to the Sir Bobby Robson era: "I’ve been a Town fan since 1971 and had the privilege of being at the cup final in 1978.
"I really do think that there is a special quality about ITFC as a club. Whoever owns the club and manages it is but a custodian of the club’s and supporters' traditions.
"I’ve been abroad so I’ve not been able to get here as often as I would have liked but I’m hoping we’re going to see some success this season, however, my take on it would probably be mid-table.”
While Town games in the latter days of Jim Magilton’s management form the backdrop and scenes take place about town, Butcher says the main thrust of the book relates more to the ongoing world financial crisis: "This is my first novel, I work in programme management, which is nothing to do with what I’ve written about, other than that I have worked in the banking industry, although not as a banker.
"The reason I wrote that book was to try and figure out what’s going wrong economically. I’m completely in disagreement with the way the banking sector is working and I’ve tried to use the book as a platform for putting forward some different views on how things might happen.”
Banking on Reddy, published by Voyagers of Fortune, is available via Amazon for £7.50, while an ebook is on sale at Kobobooks.com for £7.99.