In **The Big Quiz Night**, Paul Ashford delivers a brilliantly chaotic romp that intertwines the mundane with the extraordinary. When the Childhood Chums, an unsuspecting quiz team, enter a high-profile league, they are thrust into a whirlwind of absurdity involving radioactive slugs, international espionage, and an ancient conflict between two Central Asian deities. The stakes escalate dramatically when a gun battle erupts in the snug bar of the Three Wise Fishes, leaving the team scrambling for survival.

With their star player incapacitated by carnivorous molluscs, Rosie Dawn, the bookshop owner and team coach, reluctantly recruits a mysterious stranger whose loyalties remain shrouded in uncertainty. As the quiz spirals into chaos, the quizmaster is fatally interrupted mid-question, and the team finds themselves accused of murder, ensnared in a shadowy competition where the stakes far exceed mere bragging rights.

At the centre of this whirlwind is the enigmatic billionaire Sir Tristan Dashing, whose ambitions to restore an ancient city intertwine with a final question that promises to resolve all others. As enemies close in and the scoreboard ticks ominously upwards, Rosie and her motley crew must navigate hidden loyalties and age-old grudges, all while confronting the possibility of losing everything they hold dear.

Ashford’s novel is a wickedly clever, darkly humorous exploration of knowledge and loyalty, compelling readers to ponder what occurs when the world’s most pressing questions fall into the hands of the least qualified individuals to answer them.