ART imitates life in a Wollaston cartoonist turned author’s new comedy novel, which takes inspiration from a close-to-home mystery.

Geoff Tristram’s Adam Eve series continues with the third instalment, entitled Losing the Plot, which is set in Wollaston and which sees the 30-something writer Adam struggling to finish the final chapter of a possible best-seller.

However the hapless hero’s dream of literary stardom falls ever further out of reach after his laptop, containing his manuscript, is stolen on the train - and he is mistakenly arrested for stealing central heating radiators and murdering the town’s cats.

Geoff, from Eggington Road, says the latter plot twist was inspired by the real-life mystery of missing moggies, which led to an area of Wollaston being dubbed the Purr-muda triangle.

He told the News: “I needed something to make Adam even more harrassed than he already was after losing his novel - then I remembered the Purr-muda triangle so he gets accused of killing all these cats in Wollaston.”

Geoff, aged 59, an artist by profession, thought up the Adam Eve sagas after coming to the end of his earlier Black Country-set comedy series about madcap artist David Day.

Many local landmarks and settings are referenced, with Stourbridge getting more than its fair share of mentions in the latest offering, which Geoff describes as “one of the funniest and most original stories of the year”.

Halesowen-born writer Rob Williams, a former creative director of Penguin Books now writing top TV dramas, was also the inspiration for one of the main characters in the book - a publishing bigwig named Rob Wakefield - although Geoff admits: “I’ve made him far more sharp and bossy than Rob is really.”

Losing the Plot, priced £8.99, is available from Geoff’s website www.geofftristram.co.uk