Act of Darkness

Description

Murder. A violent death in horrifying circumstances detonates the atmosphere of languor and sexual tension in the Thompson household. Francis King's disturbing novel opens in India in the 1930s, in the lush summer house of the Thompson family. Father, stepmother, daughter, governess, ayah - all are under suspicion. And the most sinister of motives merely deflects the truth as it slithers out of reach until a final reunion in Australia decades later.

Born in Switzerland, Francis King spent his childhood in India, where his father was a government official. While still an undergraduate at Oxford he published his first three novels. He then joined the British Council, working in Italy, Greece, Egypt, Finland and Japan, before he resigned to devote himself entirely to writing. For some years he was drama critic for the Sunday Telegraph and he reviewed fiction regularly for the Spectator. He won the Somerset Maugham Prize, the Katherine Mansfield Prize and the Yorkshire Post Novel of the Year Award for Act of Darkness (1983). His penultimate book, The Nick of Time, was long-listed for the 2003 Man Booker Prize. Francis King died in 2011. "One of our great writers, of the calibre of Graham Greene and Nabokov." Beryl Bainbridge

'So beautifully written that one is reluctant to reveal who is murdered, let alone who dunnit ... brilliantly successful' Auberon Waugh 'A master novelist' Melvyn Bragg 'Will not fail to impress' Graham Swift '[has] an emotional charge and breadth of vision which place it in the forefront of this year's novels' Harriet Waugh 'Unputdownable' Paul Bailey