The Fall Guy

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 *
What a sinister and searching novel this is – and what a delight. James Lasdun is one of our great writers. -- Joseph O’Neill
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 *
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 *
Impossible to put down. * Daily Mail *
A deftly constructed narratives of guilt and buried resentment -- M. Harrison * Guardian *
Already drawing comparisons to Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train — but more aptly described as the literary descendant of Dostoyevsky and Patricia Highsmith in an alluring contemporary setting — The Fall Guy is a twisty, chilly, exquisitely written, and tautly suspenseful exploration of big ideas in the guise of a psychological thriller. * Boston Globe *