Charlie, a wealthy banker with an uneasy conscience, invites his troubled cousin Matthew to visit him and his wife in their idyllic mountain-top house over the summer. As the days grow hotter, the friendship between the three begins to reveal its fault lines.
When a fourth person arrives, the household finds itself suddenly in the grip of uncontrollable passions. Who is the real victim? Who is the perpetrator? And who, ultimately, is the fall guy?
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Imprint: Vintage Digital
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Published: 12/01/2017
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ISBN: 9781473545441
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Length: 272 Pages
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RRP: £8.99
Reviews
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Engaging, effortlessly readable… Lasdun’s writing style is clean and straightforward. All the complexity resides in character and detail. This is masterfully controlled 2am noir.
Lionel Shriver, Financial Times
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What a sinister and searching novel this is – and what a delight. James Lasdun is one of our great writers.
Joseph O’Neill
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Exceptionally entertaining…The Fall Guy reads like early Ian McEwan or late Patricia Highsmith… Lasdun is masterly in his story’s construction… This is exactly what a literary thriller should be: intelligent, careful, swift, unsettling.
Charles Finch, New York Times Book Review
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Nothing is straightforward in this slick, Highsmithian thriller, and while the damaged Matthew’s capacity for self-deception is flagged early, Lasdun’s skill lies not least in letting us think that we might therefore have his number. Wrong – and yet the novel’s denouement feels fated even as it smoothly steals the breath.
Stephanie Cross, Observer
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Impossible to put down.
Daily Mail
