About this ebook
This “thoroughly entertaining” historical novel has “the pace of a spy thriller, with code-cracking and double-crossing aplenty” (The New Yorker).
Vienna, 1913. Lysander Rief, a young English actor in town seeking psychotherapy for a troubling ailment, becomes caught up in a feverish affair with a beautiful, enigmatic woman. When she goes to the police to press charges of rape, however, he is mystified, and his few months of passion come to an abrupt end. Only a carefully plotted escape—with the help of two mysterious British diplomats—saves him from trial. But the frenzied getaway sets off a chain of events that steadily dismantles Lysander’s life as he knows it. He returns to London hoping to win back his one-time fiancée and banish from memory his traumatic ordeals abroad, but Vienna haunts him at every turn. The men who helped coordinate his escape recruit him to carry out the brutal murder of a complete stranger. His lover from Vienna shows up nonchalantly at a party, ready to resume their liaison. And before he knows where his new life has taken him, Lysander soon finds himself on the trail of a traitor—a man whose bizarre connection to his own family proves a cruel twist of fate.
“An absorbing spy novel that raises provocative questions.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Breathlessly readable.” —The Independent
“Boyd effortlessly combines historical detail with a sexy, galloping narrative that proves irresistible.” —People
“Boyd is a born story teller whose clear, taut prose never gets in the way of his characters and their unpredictable fates.” —The Wall Street Journal
“A thinking person’s thriller.” —Good Housekeeping
Vienna, 1913. Lysander Rief, a young English actor in town seeking psychotherapy for a troubling ailment, becomes caught up in a feverish affair with a beautiful, enigmatic woman. When she goes to the police to press charges of rape, however, he is mystified, and his few months of passion come to an abrupt end. Only a carefully plotted escape—with the help of two mysterious British diplomats—saves him from trial. But the frenzied getaway sets off a chain of events that steadily dismantles Lysander’s life as he knows it. He returns to London hoping to win back his one-time fiancée and banish from memory his traumatic ordeals abroad, but Vienna haunts him at every turn. The men who helped coordinate his escape recruit him to carry out the brutal murder of a complete stranger. His lover from Vienna shows up nonchalantly at a party, ready to resume their liaison. And before he knows where his new life has taken him, Lysander soon finds himself on the trail of a traitor—a man whose bizarre connection to his own family proves a cruel twist of fate.
“An absorbing spy novel that raises provocative questions.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Breathlessly readable.” —The Independent
“Boyd effortlessly combines historical detail with a sexy, galloping narrative that proves irresistible.” —People
“Boyd is a born story teller whose clear, taut prose never gets in the way of his characters and their unpredictable fates.” —The Wall Street Journal
“A thinking person’s thriller.” —Good Housekeeping
Ratings and reviews
4.7
3 reviews
Shelagh Fagan
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September 11, 2020
I love Boyd's style. So British. I couldn't put this down. Loved the authenticity of the period and the locations.
About the author
William Boyd is also the author of A Good Man in Africa, winner of the Whitbread Award and the Somerset Maugham Award; An Ice-Cream War, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys War Prize and short-listed for the Booker Prize; Brazzaville Beach, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; Restless, winner of the Costa Novel of the Year; Ordinary Thunderstorms; and Waiting for Sunrise, among other books. He lives in London.
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