Blue Afternoon - Softcover

Boyd, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140244174 ISBN 13: 9780140244175

Publisher: Penguin Canada, 1994

Synopsis

His name is Salvador Carriscant and thus begins Kay Fischer's journey into the past of this beguiling and seductive older man who claims to be her father. A young architect, struggling to establish her career in Los Angeles in the 1930s, Kay is initially resistant and skeptical. But, increasingly, she finds herself trammeled up in his concerns and is enlisted by him in a bizarre quest that has its origins in the Philippines, in Manila, in 1902. As he begins slyly to confide in her she comes to learn about the extraordinary central event in Carriscant's life, a love affair of uncommon intensity, and, at the same time, a baffling and compelling mystery of murder and mutilation, rivalry and betrayal, surgery, flying machines and crystallized violets.

About this title

Review:

Boyd, the author of A Good Man in Africa and Brazzaville Beach, here gives us something entirely new, part suspense, part romance, all grand storytelling. A young woman, waylaid by an old man who claims to be her father, hears his story of corruption and intrigue as the two of them embark on a remarkable journey.

From the Inside Flap:

From the acclaimed author of Brazzaville Beach and The Blue Afternoon, a new novel, set in present-day London, which demonstrates the superbly plotted storytelling that has earned William Boyd his reputation as a writer whose "eccentric wit and restless intelligence exert a powerful appeal" (New York Times Book Review).
One cold winter's morning, Lorimer Black--
insurance adjuster, young, good-looking, on the rise--goes out on a perfectly ordinary business appointment, finds a hanged man and realizes that his life is about to be turned upside down. The elements at play: a beautiful actress glimpsed in a passing taxi . . . an odd new business associate whose hiring, firing  and rehiring make little sense . . . a rock musician who is losing his mind--and a web of fraud in which virtually everyone Lorimer Black knows has been caught and in which he finds himself increasingly entangled.
Boyd at his urbane and mesmerizing best.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Canada
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0140244174
• ISBN 13: 9780140244175
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 336