‘Robert Wilson’s fiction grows darker, deeper, more adamantly original. His seventh novel — nominally a thriller — turns the format inside out, extending its reach, tuning up the language, reinventing its anatomy. It is crime writing at its very best, but it is also something more. It observes no limits, it begs no pardon. It excites, it surprises and it satisfies. High praise but Wilson really is this good’
PHILIP OAKES,
‘A big, highly entertaining and thought-provoking book, dealing as it does with themes of obsession, dysfunctional families, paranoia, the thirst for vengeance and insanity. The exotic setting, the true-to-life characters, the psychological perceptions and the interpolated journals of the father impart depth and breadth to a narrative that is as multi-faceted as Restoration drama’
VINCENT BANVILLE,
TOBY CLEMENTS,
‘Finely written picture of Seville and a moody
JANE JAKEMAN,
‘As an evocation of the emotional labyrinth of postwar Tangiers and as a tale of artistic drift, it’s rather brilliant — a detective story Paul Bowles never wrote’
CHRIS PETIT,
‘A fascinating, harrowing and moving account of a man facing the most heartbreaking truths about his life. A consummate writer who uses a broad canvas to explore many mysteries and delivers a magnificent and riveting story’
CATH STAINCLIFFE,
‘Admirably paced and enthrallingly elaborate’
JOHN DUGDALE,
‘It is a book that exists on multiple levels, kicking off as an off-key detective story and ending up as (among other things) a tense psychological thriller and a literary investigation into perception and family loyalties. A wonderful, if dark and disturbing, literary detective novel’
MARTIN RADCLIFFE,
‘The momentum never flags as the clues mount up and Falcon begins to realize where they are leading. It’s an intriguing story and Mr Wilson handles its complexities superbly’
SUSANNA YAGER,
‘This is powerful evocative stuff’
PETER GUTTRIDGE,
‘A splendid assembly of complexities and relationships that tangle generations in murder and scandal … Wilson has a talent for digging beneath the skin to explore psychological and emotional nuances’
‘Cruel, mesmerizing, and wonderfully intelligent’
Art is vice. You don’t marry it legitimately, you rape it.
EDGAR DEGAS
‘You have to look,’ said the voice.
But he couldn’t look. He was the one person who couldn’t look at it, who would never be able to look at it because it started things up in that part of his brain, the part that would show up bright red on a cerebral scan while he was asleep, that tunnel of the brain maze which laymen would name ‘wild imaginings’. It was the danger zone which had to be closed off, barricaded with whatever came to hand, nailed up, chained, padlocked, key hurled into the deepest lake. It was the dead end where his big-boned, mule-knuckled peasant frame was reduced to the shivering nakedness of a little boy, face pressed into the dark, hard, narrow comfort of a corner, legs and buttocks raw from sitting in his uncontrollable urine.
He wouldn’t look. He couldn’t.
The sound from the TV switched back to an old movie. He heard the dubbed voices. Yes, he’d look at that. He could look at James Cagney speaking Spanish while his eyes darted in his head and his lips said things differently.
