MISSING, PRESUMED
Crime novelist Susie Steiner, whose books I’ve seen in my grocery store’s bargain books section, has died of big bad glio aged 51. Initially a journalist who worked for most major UK papers, she turned to novel writing in the early 2010s. Her detective thriller trilogy featuring DI Manon Bradshaw (nowt to do with me) proved popular on both sides of the pond, and eerily she wrote a cancer subplot in the final entry (for which she took to past DDP hit Simon Ricketts’s blog for inspiration) while unaware of the brain tumour growing inside her. The diagnosis quashed any hopes of a Bradshaw tetralogy, and her 2020 Guardian article about living with cancer drew the attention of eagle-eyed deadpoolers.
Former champions The Love Boat and David Quantick’s Showbiz Pals both selected Steiner for 2021, and by the summer her complete radio silence made points seem imminent. Only then she did what Bob Dole, Alan Igglesden, F. W. de Klerk, and all those other “great 2022 picks that won’t actually make it” names couldn’t do and live to become a 2022 Drop 40 canoner selected by most top teams. Though the vast majority of the top 10 picked her, dark horse DDP Tofoa avoided her and sees his path to upsetting Spade narrow. Banana’s Peel Slippers now rises to second in a race that’s still far from over. Veterans I’m Sorry For Your Trouble (who has read a couple of Steiner books) and Funeral Holmes both score joker points, and The End of the World As We Know It obtains their 100th lifetime hit.
Susie Steiner
29 June 1971 – 2 July 2022, aged 51
36 TEAMS (💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀 + 40 = 12 POINTS, 🃏 (x2) 24 POINTS)