Author:Brian Thompson
London is alive with gossip about the thrilling new book by sensationalist author Henry Ellis Margam, but only a select group of people know that the real author is beautiful widow, and member of high society, Bella Wallis.
One of her confidantes is the dashing Philip Westland, who comes to Bella now with a problem: his best friend Kennet is smitten with the heiress Mary Skillane but Mary's father, Sir William, has promised her to Robert Judd, a vulgar treasure-seeker. Mary is due to inherit the Skillane pearls, which are currently residing in a Cornsih bank vault, but it seems that the pearls were ill-gotten.
Can Bella and her friends reunite the young lovers and escape the attention of the villainous Judd?
With a glorious heroine and wicked humour, Brian Thompson lays bare the sexual shenanigans and hypocrisy of Victorian England
—— John HarveyThe atmosphere is delicious, tangible, and irresistible. The dialogue is believably Victorian. And Bella Wallis is a joy to follow around through a few hundred pages
—— The Historical Novels ReviewEdge-of-your-seat suspense
—— HARLAN COBENOne of the most popular crime writers of our time
—— PATRICIA CORNWELLBy far the best writer of police mysteries today
—— Michael OndaatjeThe novels become a compulsion - one reads them all
—— Daily TelegraphThe most original crime writer of our time
—— SpectatorJames Ellroy is a genius: the finest American crime writer since Raymond Chandler, and one of the most readable experimental writers in the world
—— Times Literary SupplementWithout him and his crime fiction, there's no David Peace or The Sopranos or Ian Rankin or The Wire or the work of countless writers and film makers who saw a different way of doing things when they first cracked the spine on an Ellroy
—— GQBurnside is an accomplished and careful writer. And this is a beautiful book, compelling and strange
—— Margaret Reynolds , The TimesUnsettling, hauntingly memorable tale
—— Sunday TimesWritten with deceptive elegance, riddled with gaps and non sequiturs and a clever travesty of several genres, this is a disturbing, provocative book'
—— Guardian
[A Summer of Drowning] brings an eerie glow to the colours and sounds, flora and foodstuffs of the far north