"Dreadnought Flex was why I left Copenhagen and came here -to West London."
Businessman, sociopath and aspirational cookery writer, Dreadnought Xavier Flex is a man out of time ... in at least two senses. Not only does he feel the threats to his wellbeing moving closer, he is worried that his leadership of his team of thugs is slipping. For now, he manages to keep the rival gangsters in their place ... but for how long?
A Danish visitor with secrets of his own - Rene - is convinced that he has known Dreadnought at other periods of their shared history through the centuries - and will continue to know him into a future they are starting to glimpse. Rene wants to write Dreadnought's biography. What better way of gaining Dreadnought's trust than to become part of his violent team?
But who is Rene really, and how can he have known the various versions of Dreadnought who have existed? Where will their tangled timelines lead?
"Dreadnought was a very real presence back in those days, when David Mathew first cautiously introduced him to me. You could feel him lurking there in the pub with us, glaring and muttering virile threats, peeling off notes from a grenade of fivers, as roseate and raw with pressure as a phimosis. The terrible ideas he had, the appalling decisions he made, the crisp deterrents he meted. Unyielding, sentimental, complex, simple; a force. A paradox. An enigma. A cunt. Let David Mathew introduce you to Dreadnought Flex. See how you do."
Paul Meloy, Author of Adornments of the Storm
"Dreadnought Flex is written with such clarity and insight that it gets to the heart of broken masculinity. A thrilling and savage read."
Jonathan Oliver, British Fantasy Award-winning anthologist and writer
"Let's say Dreadnought Flex is a weird crime combination of time-travel and casual violence, or perhaps Dreadnought Flex is an SF novel replete with bar room anecdotes running an East End vibe, or maybe Dreadnought Flex is the prelude to a master criminal's cook book where the recipes - and also these definitions - should be taken with a pinch of salt. Then let's say Bone is a better condiment, a gateway to access alternate versions of the novel and its characters, where Mathew has cooked a fast-paced hybrid with a distinct voice and a twisted heart. If that's what we're saying Dreadnought Flex is about, then we might just be getting close."
Andrew Hook, Author of the Mordent neo-noir crime series (The Immortalists, Church of Wire)
"You won't be able to take your eyes off Dreadnought Flex. And you'd be wise not to - he's as unpredictable as this strange, original, exhilaratingly funny novel."
Mat Coward, Dagger and Edgar nominated crime writer
About the Author: David Mathew is the author of the novels O My Days, Ventriloquists, The Parry and the Lunge and Dreadnought Flex, among other works. His shorter fiction is collected in Sick Dice and Panic Soup. A full-time academic in the Centre for Learning Excellence at the University of Bedfordshire, UK, he has a PhD in Higher Education and Psychoanalysis, and his academic work is published in the books Fragile Learning: The Influence of Anxiety, The Care Factory, and the forthcoming Psychic River: Storms and Safe Ports in Lifelong Learning and Long Lessons: The Endurance of Anxiety (a follow-up volume to Fragile Learning). He is a keen student of psychoanalysis and human behaviour, as well as of group activity. He lives in the south-east of England and enjoys hiking with his dog and the musical genres of jazz fusion and post-rock (although not at the same time).
