Gilbert Adair

Boxing Day circa 1935. A snowed-in manor on the very edge of Dartmoor. A Christmas house-party. And overhead, in the attic, the dead body of Raymond Gentry, gossip columnist and blackmailer, shot through the heart. But the attic door is locked from the inside, its sole window is traversed by thick iron bars and, naturally, there is no sign of a murderer or a murder weapon. Fortunately (though, for the murderer, unfortunately), one of the guests is the formidable Evadne Mount, the bestselling author of countless classic whodunits. In fact, were she not its presiding sleuth, THE ACT OF ROGER MURGATROYD is exactly the type of whodunit she herself might have written.

A wonderfully funny yet tender evocation of the hedonistic 1980s. A young gay British man comes to 1980s Paris to teach English and to taste the erotic life that has eluded him in Britain. He suddenly finds himself in the midst of a sexual free-for-all beyond his wildest dreams - and then the AIDS epidemic hits. A beautiful, profane and witty novel from one of the masters of the form. ''It stands with Hemingway or Fitzgerald's depictions of the Jazz Age as a cool yet passionate testament to an age now vanished.' Scotland on Sunday; 'This is a disturbing, brave and very well written book.' Spectator; 'A stylistic tour de force... it is life, not death that this novel affirms.' Sunday Times; 'Adair is a writer of undoubted class and has the gift of sharp portraiture needed to make a picaresque novel sing.' Sunday Telegraph'

Paris, mayo del 68. Los mellizos Isabelle y Théo se quedan solos en París cuando su padre, poeta, se retira a su casa de campo. Libres de la tutela de los adultos, los hermanos ponen en práctica una serie de juegos eroticos cada vez mas atrevidos. Entre ellos, la novedad se agota pronto, y deciden invitar a su apartamento a un joven americano de sexualidad ambigua. Juntos, en su refugio, pueden hacer lo que deseen con quien deseen y con la frecuencia que quieran. Un privilegio que desemboca en nuevas y extremas fantasias.

London, 1946: An actress is murdered, not just on camera but in full view of a crowded film set. Only six people had an opportunity to administer the poison yet not one of them had a conceivable motive. As Evadne Mount, bestselling crime novelist, discovers, however, all six did have a motive for committing another, earlier, still unsolved murder yet, on that occasion, not one of them had the opportunity..