Dispatching Baudelaire

Ken Bruen author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:The Lilliput Press Ltd

Published:24th May '04

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Dispatching Baudelaire cover

Throughout his life accountant Mike Shaw has played it safe, kept his head down, and avoided risk. His girlfriend Brenda is a secretary. Their idea of a night on the town is to visit the local pizza parlour. But when Mike meets Laura in a bar off The Strand, their lives are irrevocably changed. Small, sexy, smart – and utterly dangerous – Laura instantly spellbinds Mike and leads him into a world of moral depravity, dominated by the sinister presence of her powerful and rich father, Harold Benton. Dressed in safari suits, dining in West End restaurants, Benton drinks only the best of wines and whiskies, imitates Richard Burton, and quotes French poet Baudelaire at every opportunity. He is also without conscience, on a hell-bent mission to mould others to his likeness. Dispatching Baudelaire is about what can happen to the blandest of men when he is seduced by money, power and sex. As we follow Mike on his journey to the heart of darkness, we come to discover that there are few more dangerous animals than an Englishman off balance. Set against the paranoia of early 1990s post-Thatcher London, this is yet another addictive page-turner from Ken Bruen, author of the bestselling Vixen, The Guards and The Killing of the Tinkers – one of the critically acclaimed greats of modern crime and suspense fiction.

A soul-mate of Jim Thompson’s, or maybe of James M.Cain’s, he has a cast of characters which rates high on the deadbeat scale.’ – Irish Times ‘Blurring different styles and genre traits is not only necessary for fiction to evolve and remain relevant, but it also makes for a damn exciting read … Bruen’s books are like odd architectural wonders, stark, strangely unsettling, beautifully classical, yet wholly modern.’ – Crime Factory ‘Bruen is an original, grimly hilarious and gloriously Irish.’ – Patrick Anderson, Washington Post

ISBN: 9781903305126

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 250g

160 pages