Come on Granddad: Hold My Hand, by Ted Evans, Worthside Holdings, £12.99

Come on Granddad: Hold My Hand is a progressively harrowing story told through the thoughts of David Stephens, a prosperous Yorkshire businessman who becomes afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease in his early 60s.

Most of the 258-page novel consists of David’s internal narrative as he silently strives to recount what happened to him. He describes events, recalls conversations and re-enacts the lows of married life with his gold-digging wife Phoebe and the highs enjoyed with his carer and lover Constance.

These passages are linked by paragraphs in italics, in which the dying David, struggling to remember and arrange his thoughts, relives moments with his grandchildren, his daughter Hannah and his faithful Constance: “She’s lifting me up, this bag of skin and bones and holding me tight as though I was her treasured possession. Oh those lips again, that caress, that warmth. My whole body is coming alive. Oh I do love her. Tell her, tell her, come on you can do it; say I love you. I can, I can, I can, ‘I love you...’”

Written by Haworth businessman and novelist Ted Evans, who has witnessed the ravages of this form of dementia – watching a friend of 40 years and his wife struggling to cope with the consequences – its publication is timely.

For it happens to coincide with a Bupa project on spotting the early signs of dementia, supported by Strictly Come Dancing judge Arlene Phillips whose father Abraham died from Alzheimer’s.

Millionaire David Stephens treats the workforce at his engineering works with consideration, makes shrewd and profitable business decisions and enjoys a pleasurable, independent lifestyle: hard work, good cars, fast women.

He agrees to marry the sexually voracious Phoebe after she announces she is seven weeks pregnant – and lives to regret it in more ways than one.

He quickly learns to be wary of his wife’s lust for money and secretly alters his will, making her an allowance of £1,500 a week for life; but blocking her claims on his business and other assets. These he transfers to Constance, his real love who stands by him in his years of trial and tribulation.

Most of the book depicts the battle between good and evil, represented by Hannah and Constance on the side of the angels, and the scheming Phoebe who bribes doctors into sectioning her husband in a Humberside hell-hole. Hannah and David’s long-standing friend and doctor James eventually get him out, but only after weeks of humiliation.

There are right ways and wrong ways of responding to dementia. Hannah and Constance – patient, attentive, caring – embody the right way. Phoebe – condescending, selfish and cruel – embodies the wrong way.

In previous books Ted Evans has had trouble organising his writing. Primarily he’s a natural born story teller, not a writer. That said, when in flow he can depict a scene, deliver dialogue, describe landscape in Yorkshire or France, in a way that compels attention pleasurably.

In previous novels his main character narrates the story to a fictional reporter, based on real-life T&A journalist Clive White, in the role of passive listener. As a device it worked well enough in the adventure thriller II PY; thereafter it struck me as intrusive and unnecessary, performing no vital function in the telling of the story.

Thankfully, Mr Evans has dispensed with that device for this book. The first 100 pages are peculiarly enjoyable; thereafter, David’s story gets darker as he loses self-confidence, suffers memory loss and the control of his life slips out of his hands.There are an estimated 800,000 Davids in the UK. How many have a Hannah, Constance or friendly doctor to stand by them?

On the back cover there’s a pledge that for every copy sold £1 will be donated to Alzheimer’s sufferers and their families.