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Just figured out the name of the book - excellent 😃

I don’t think I can make sense of the encoding instructions until I have the book title, is that right?
Despite finishing grid, I have several of the extra letters missing, please help with 3 and 4d, and parsing 15d is particularly frustrating.

Lumen:

In 3 you have to add a letter to the 3rd and last words (in the latter case making a Latin-style plural). You then have fodder for an anagram.

4 has an extra letter inserted in the first and 5th words. The clue is a reversed letters-in-other-letters to give an American spelling of a word for stink.

15 a letter is added to fourth and sixth words.

I'm not sure it's possible to work out what to do unless you have the book title and have read the Wiki piece on it. Encoding is perhaps slightly misleading as - if I've got it right - the letters in the columns simply move around.

Hi Lumen,

Yes, I think you'll need the book title. I got if from Google with about 75% of the letters.

3d - Is an anagram - definition is "thigh"

4d - 2 letter "God" with the missing letter added around 2 letter "contents of "ode" again with letter added - definition is "stink in America"

15d -Single letter "Easter" with letter added + 3 letter "do" + 4 letter "had" with letter added - all surrounded by 2 letter "bishop" - definition is "review"

Thanks both. Wow 15 was tough.
I have those three letters now. Not really helping, not letters I expected! It’s not in Spanish is it!?

No Lumen. The book title from the down clue letters is 4,6,3.

Not Spanish, no. The first word is a female name.

Thanks again, absolutely brilliant!
Anyone thinking of giving up - don’t!

Help please with the highlighting...I have a line of 5 cells for the main character but can't see the rest? author?

Bunty, have you done the 'recoding'? The names don't appear until you've done that. The author is there, in two parallel parts.