On a cold winter's morning, Lorimer Black, an insurance adjustor -- young, good-looking, on the rise -- goes to keep a perfectly ordinary appointment only to find a hanged man.
His life is about to be turned upside down and in directions he never imagined. The elements at play: A beautiful actress with whom he finds himself falling in love after a quick glimpse of her in a passing taxi ... an odd, new, business associate whose hiring, firing and rehiring make little sense ... a rock musician whose loss -- in this case of his mind -- may be "adjusted" by the insurance company. What ties it all together: a web of fraud in which virtually everyone he knows is somewhat involved, a web in which he finds himself being increasingly entangled.
"Darkly comic" --Booklist
"Everything good fiction should be...It begins with a jolt...and then goes on to become even better" --David Nicholson, Washington Post
"A satirical noir...probing, droll, and full of rewards" --Ben Greenman, Time Out
"A real page-turner" --The Observer, London
"Zesty & brilliantly on-target...Lorimer's adventures have enough of an alarming edge to keep a reader constantly, and delightedly, off balance" --Publishers Weekly
WILLIAM BOYD was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana, and grew up there and in Nigeria. He is the award-winning author of seventeen highly acclaimed novels and five collections of stories. He divides his time between London and France.
View titles by William Boyd
On a cold winter's morning, Lorimer Black, an insurance adjustor -- young, good-looking, on the rise -- goes to keep a perfectly ordinary appointment only to find a hanged man.
His life is about to be turned upside down and in directions he never imagined. The elements at play: A beautiful actress with whom he finds himself falling in love after a quick glimpse of her in a passing taxi ... an odd, new, business associate whose hiring, firing and rehiring make little sense ... a rock musician whose loss -- in this case of his mind -- may be "adjusted" by the insurance company. What ties it all together: a web of fraud in which virtually everyone he knows is somewhat involved, a web in which he finds himself being increasingly entangled.
Reviews
"Darkly comic" --Booklist
"Everything good fiction should be...It begins with a jolt...and then goes on to become even better" --David Nicholson, Washington Post
"A satirical noir...probing, droll, and full of rewards" --Ben Greenman, Time Out
"A real page-turner" --The Observer, London
"Zesty & brilliantly on-target...Lorimer's adventures have enough of an alarming edge to keep a reader constantly, and delightedly, off balance" --Publishers Weekly
WILLIAM BOYD was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana, and grew up there and in Nigeria. He is the award-winning author of seventeen highly acclaimed novels and five collections of stories. He divides his time between London and France.
View titles by William Boyd
