Claudia wants
a hitman.
So does Gary.
A zany, blood-flecked comic crime novel about a marriage gone spectacularly wrong — and the increasingly useless assassins caught in the middle of it.
The trailer
18 seconds. No spiders were harmed.
What it's about
Claudia Alcock is looking for a hitman. Not just any hitman but one who can get the job done properly. After all, she may be a frizzy-haired, middle-aged woman with paranoid tendencies and a chequered romantic past but she's no fool. Her cheating soon-to-be ex-husband Gary, aided by his equally unfaithful new lover Alexa, deserve nothing less than a fitting comeuppance.
Unfortunately for Claudia, Gary has plans of his own. Determined to secure Claudia's fortune, he hires his own hitman whose messy efforts range from bombs to snipers to poisonous spiders.
Can Claudia dodge these increasingly ludicrous attempts on her life?
Zany, darkly comic and gloriously unpredictable.
Reviews
Superb — witty, grounded and characterful.Luca Veste, editor of CrimeBits2: 100 Opening Gambits for Great Thrillers
Dark humour, hilarious narration — wanted it to keep on forever.NetGalley reader review
She's mad as a box of frogs and NOT someone you want to be on the wrong side of — but she's definitely who you root for.NetGalley reader review
Bombs going off in suburban streets, random shootings, work affairs, poisonings — a whole series of TV gold in the making.NetGalley reader review
The grown-up Home Alone female revenge fantasy of my dreams.NetGalley reader review
Claudia is one of the most hilariously eccentric characters I've come across in a long time.Amazon reader review
I choked on my tea more than once at the unexpected bursts of dark humour.Amazon reader review
About DN Potter
DN Potter writes comic crime fiction — the kind where the bodies pile up but somehow it's still your fault for laughing. I, Claudia is the first novel, with a psychological thriller, Dead to the World, due out in summer 2027.
DN Potter's background is in journalism and he spent 20 years as a newspaper editor before leaving the industry to start his own PR and media consultancy. He took early retirement so he could focus instead on his love of creative writing and recently gained a master's degree in crime and thriller writing from Cambridge University, where his tutor was crime writer Elly Griffiths.
He is a member of the Society of Authors and enjoys reading and writing all kinds of crime fiction - from comic and cosy crime right through to domestic noir. His comic crime novel "I, Claudia" was published in 2026 by The Book Guild after being shortlisted in the Farnham First Five Pages literary competition in 2025.
Prior to that in 2020 he won the National Association of Writers’ Groups’ Short Story competition and in 2024 he won NAWG’s Comedy Writing competition. In addition he has been shortlisted in various other short story competitions while in 2024 one of his (as yet unpublished) comic novels "The Art of Deception" was shortlisted in the Novel London literary competition.
His psychological thriller "Dead To The World", which was shortlisted for the Yeovil Literary Prize's Novel of the Year in 2025, as well as being longlisted in the Farnham First Five Pages literary competition in 2026, is due to be published in the summer of 2027 by The Book Guild.
Dead to the World
A psychological thriller — the second novel from DN Potter. Synopsis, cover reveal, and trailer to follow as publication nears.