Thomas Hocknell is a blogger at idle Blogs of an Idle Fellow - writing in the manner that Jerome K Jerome might have, were he writing in 2016, and not 1886. The Life Assistance Agency is his first novel and is the journey of a blogger, Ben Ferguson-Cripps, who sets aside his literary failures to join the newly established Life Assistance Agency in pursuit of a missing professor obsessed with the Elizabethan alchemist Dr. Dee. It is influenced by Douglas Adams, PG Wodehouse, Tintin, Dan Brown, and Conan Doyle.