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This should be easy to remember, but I'm having a senior moment.

In the 1980s, potentially early 1990s, I read a very funny book about a man who's wife goes off with the new neighbours on a houseboat and the husband is soon on the hook for killing her. She learns they are swingers, at which point she escapes on a floaty. Meanwhile he's accused of disposing of the body in his college class' meat grinder. Noticing one of the officers having a meat pie, he agrees with them and says he put it in the filling. Eventually everything unwinds and they live happily ever after.

This was a pretty well-known book, at least in the UK. So much so that they turned it into a moderately OK movie, but like so many, the timing just wasn't on.

In any event, does anyone recall the title? I'm looking for some summer reading for a friend and thought they'd like it.

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4

Wilt, by Tom Sharpe

The police are called and several witnesses come forward to wildly misinterpret what they saw as Wilt throwing a body down the hole and – because his wife has taken an unscheduled break with the Californian couple on a boat in the Broads and is nowhere to be found – the police arrest Wilt on suspicion of murder.

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  • Huh. This came to my mind too, but as well as not remembering its name, I also never actually read it and thought it didn't fit except in broad strokes. +1. – Rand al'Thor Jun 11 at 5:44
  • Well the OP's rendering isn't exact... no-one ever said Wilt and Eva lived happily ever after.... – Spagirl Jun 11 at 9:30
  • Thanks so much! – Maury Markowitz Jun 11 at 18:14
  • And it seems I'm remembering one scene from the movie version, not the book. – Maury Markowitz Jun 11 at 18:15
  • @MauryMarkowitz I can’t remember the book too well, but I think Eva escapes the houseboat naked on a lilo while Wilt has adventures trying to dispose of an inflated sex doll. I imagine scope for a lot of cinematic visuals... and I definitely remember the meat pie bit from either that book or a sequel. – Spagirl Jun 11 at 20:36

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