The Hills Are Stuffed With Swedish Girls

Three lovesick men (and their cat) head into the glorious Scottish highlands in search of the beautiful tourist girls who will surely cure all that ails them. But there are going to be problems. Fitch is so upset over losing his job and the love of his life that he has taken the terrifying step of composing poetry. Wentworth, a high-bred lawyer, gets the shakes if he goes more than half a mile from a delicatessen. While Macrae, a Royal Marine, is also a vodka-toting maniac whose last great idea was snorting gunpowder. And Jones the tomcat insists on murdering wildlife. What's going to happen when they're all stuck up a rainy glen in a leaking tent? How much damage is it possible to do on a distillery tour? Will they ever find the mythical Swedish girls? Or do the hills hold deeper secrets about what goes on in the hearts of men? There's only one way to find out. Pack your rucksack, lace your boots and head for the hills with the boys...

I am a member of staff at The Clachaig Inn in Glencoe, and I've just finished reading your book. I'd just like to say it is a serious contender for the most entertaining book I've ever had the pleasure to read, and it has been the subject of a great deal of jokes and banter for the last week or so. A hugely enjoyable, believable and very touching read. Many thanks from the depths of Glencoe! --James Roddie.... Brilliant, nearly cried with laughter at several parts and thoroughly enjoyed it. Any chance of a sequel? --Andy Ross, mwis.org.uk... I thoroughly recommend this book to everyone who likes Scotland it's not only the funniest book I've read in ages, with some classic characters and lines, it's also a very thought-provoking story with real messages (in between the chasing hot European girls and causing mayhem, that is). Hopefully destined to become a tongue-in-cheek classic of mountain literature! --Only A Hill, UKClimbing.com.... What started off as a coarse and crude 'blokes' book about beer and sex, turns in to a thoroughly engrossing adventure and travelogue. With some great characters, excruciatingly funny bits, some cringingly embarrassing bits and some real edge of your seat page turning stuff. And the ending - totally, totally brilliant. A tear jerker for even the hardest heart. Not what I was expecting at all. But brilliant. More please, Mr Happer. --S.J. Davies Your book nearly got me arrested. I was on the first plane to Berlin, sitting at my window seat with tears of laughter running down my cheeks. As you might imagine your average German kinda struggles to see the funny side of it - thought I was some psychologically unstable nut-job... Please write more books. --Jim Strang I agree with the other reviewer about the laugh-out-loud factor (some of the set-pieces made me weep with laughter) but the book is richer and more complex than the title might suggest. The three young men's adventure has a mythic flavour, with their different characters (savage, refined, and in-between) mirroring the conflicts between culture and nature that we all feel - should we try to get laid, or write a poem? Preferably both, the author seems to be saying. Surreal plot twists and startling action sequences serve to reinforce this sense of things happening on a higher plane - it's a journey though the mountains, but also a journey through Fitch's dark night of the soul. It's outstandingly well-written - hilarious dialogue, razor-sharp action and really quite chilling violence, and weirdly vivid descriptions of landscape (something I normally find dull, but did not here) It makes me want to go to Scotland! This is a beautiful, life-affirming read - I got through it too quickly. I look forward to Happer's next novel. --BJ Twiston-Davies, London

Happs tells me that he was born in Edinburgh but didn't grow up there. He says that like many men, he didn't grow much after the age of 12. Mentally at least. Since then he has been trying to use his juvenile, silly and mischievous personality to make money. He is failing in this endeavour. It's the mature, serious and boring people who make all the cash. 'What do they do with it?' Richard wonders. He loved books as a boy, then went to university to study them and almost had that love criticised out of him. It was painful. Not only had he seen some of his most treasured tales reduced to cogs and wheels, he knew for certain that he could never write stories that would appeal to people who read books that way. Henry James may have written amazing works of literature, but his tales said nothing to Happs. So, after that there was a long while when Happs lived in a cave full of gin, barking the text for advertisements into a recording machine and watching 'An American Werewolf in London' and 'Roman Holiday' alternately through the night every night. (Another of my sources tells me that he was a copywriter.) Then one day, while walking in a forest with a river in it, Happs realised that he didn't have to be sad because he would never write like Henry James and so would never be able to tell anyone about the stories in his head; he could simply tell the tales HIS way. He jumped in the air, scared a squirrel, skipped all the way home through the autumn leaves and wrote 'The Hills Are Stuffed With Swedish Girls' that very day. And it doesn't matter if those clever critics don't see enough cogs in his books because the point is that the books are out there in the jungle and the animals love them. And 12 year old Happs would like that. Very much.