Solving time: 13:16 (one mistake)

Another excellent puzzle from Virgilius with a theme (7, arguably 10 answers) based on a work by one of my favourite authors. Anyone unfamiliar with the excerpt in question can read it here, while the whole book can be found here and its predecessor here. Unfortunately I made a pig’s ear of this puzzle, starting with a time-costly mistake (see 1dn) and finishing with another (17dn).

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No good deed goes unpunished. I volunteered to do Tuesday’s cryptic thinking that I’ll probably get someone tractable like Shed, Quantum, etc. – but no… and we’re left with four wordplays I can’t work out (thanks to Loonapick and michod and Peter Owen below we have all of them resolved now).

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