in West Africa during the Second World War; it features a bizarre cricket match. More recently, George MacDonald Fraser claimed in his novel Flashman's Lady (1977) that Harry Flashman was the first cricketer to record a "hat-trick". The caddish fictional hero participates in a cricket match at Lord's in 1842 that features some of the leading cricketers of that era – Felix, Fuller Pilch, and Alfred Mynn. (Flashman gets Felix's wicket through skill, Pilch's through luck, and Mynn's by 'knavery'.) MacDonald Fraser takes great care to describe the sights and sounds of Lord's as it was in the 1840s. Although very different from Sassoon's style, his descriptions of the cricket match and its setting often reach an idyllic beauty that fits in well with the romantic nostalgia for village cricket during much of the 20th century. In Life, the Universe and Everything (1982), the third book in Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker series, Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect travel through the space-time continuum to Lord's, where a shocking act of cricket vandalism takes place – the Ashes trophy is stolen by a band of robber-robots from the planet Krikkit. The novel contains an alternative explanation of the genesis of the game – cricket is actually the product of a sort of "interspecies collective unconscious memory", and it is the humans who have shamelessly trivialised it into a sport. About 50 years after the bodyline controversy, Paul Wheeler wrote a fictionalised account of that infamous series in Bodyline: The Novel (1983). Wheeler also wrote the script for the Australian mini-series Bodyline (1984). Willie Rushton wrote the comic novel W.G. Grace's Last Case (1984), in which he imagined the cricketer having a side-line as a private detective. Also in the 1980s, the writer and broadcaster Peter Tinniswood published a series of ten books on cricket, fictional and humorous in nature. Early professional cricket in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars forms part of the historical backdrop to Bernard Cornwell's novel, Gallows Thief (2002). Cricket is a major part of the novella 24 for 3 (2007) by Jennie Walker, set in London, and the novel Netherland (2008) by Joseph O'Neill, set in New York. Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew by Shehan Karunatilaka (2008) (known only by the subtitle in the USA) is in large part, an exploration of Sri Lankan cricket. In 2012 the former Derbyshire opening batsman and screenwriter Peter Gibbs wrote a