The Fall Guy

Description

An idyllic summer retreat becomes a stage for lies, lust and revenge in this psychological thriller. 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?

James Lasdun's books include The Fall Guy and Give Me Everything You Have- On Being Stalked. He teaches creative writing at Columbia University and reviews regularly for the Guardian. His work has been filmed by Bernardo Bertolucci (Besieged) and he co-wrote the films Sunday, which won Best Feature and Best Screenplay awards at Sundance, and Signs and Wonders, starring Charlotte Rampling and Stellan Skarsg rd.

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 *