The Deaths by Mark Lawson
Two in one: a consummately plotted crime novel and a forensic social satire from one of Britain's most highly regarded broadcasters. Four families, the Crossans, the Dunsters, the Lonsdales and the Rutherfords live in a beautiful stretch of English countryside in magnificent listed houses, built for the old aristocracy. They are the new aristocracy: financiers, business tycoons, lawyers, doctors, magistrates. They leave their rural idyll only to commute first-class to London for meetings, deals and theatre outings or Heathrow flights to winter sun or half-term skiing. They and their children are protected by investments, pensions and expensive security systems. But the money is running out in Britain and new divisions and connections develop between the group of friends, until, finally, deep in the English winter, an unthinkable act of violence destroys these dream lives and demonstrates that the biggest threat may come from unexpected places. Mark Lawson's new novel is a wonderfully entertaining dark comedy of manners. This novel cleverly combines two areas of Mark's interests and insights. Firstly Mark's love of crime fiction is shown in a brilliantly conceived and (literally) executed crime story. A series of murders are committed on the first pages. It is only right at the end of the novel that you realise who the victims are and who committed the crime. And secondly, Mark just knows how the aspiring and often appalling upper middle classes live: this is social satire told with devastating and often hilarious detail.
'Astonishingly expansive, hilarious and heartbreakingly dark' Julie Myerson, Observer, Best Holiday Reads 2013 'Mark Lawson's dark social satire on the British upper middle classes, skewers with precision this group of rich professionals who have grown fat and well-holidayed during the New Labour boom years but are now coming to a crunch point.. Lawson's skill is to make his characters believable and, despite their odiousness, to make us care about them and their (possibly terrible) fate.' ' Financial Times 'Mark Lawson writes with a forensic eye for detail, exposing the foibles of his characters with scalpel-like precision. A wonderful, bitingly satirical, achingly true, warts and all portrait of modern middle-class England -- and a true shocker of an ending' Peter James 'A wickedly witty snapshot of contemporary life' Cambridge News 'Sharp and very funny ... wonderfully vivid and detailed' Guardian 'A cleverly constructed crime novel that's really a dark comedy of social observation and satire.' Choice Magazine 'a wickedly witty snapshot of contemporary life.' Irish Examiner 'sharply observed and blackly funny' Metro Scotland 'Mark Lawson's bleak satire on England's new aristocracy pulls no punches' Observer 'packed with superbly sharp observation' Sunday Times 'written with panache' The Times (Saturday Review)
Mark Lawson has published four novels: Idlewild, Going Out Live, Enough Is Enough and The Deaths. His work as a broadcaster includes BBC Radio 4's Front Row and Foreign Bodies - A History of Crime Fiction and BBC4's Mark Lawson Talks to . . . . He also writes for the Guardian and the New Statesman.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781447235682 |
| ISBN 10 | 1447235681 |
| Title | The Deaths |
| Author | Mark Lawson |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Pan Macmillan |
| Year published | 2013-09-12 |
| Number of pages | 480 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |