The Crooked Man - Softcover

Davison, Philip

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0142002089 ISBN 13: 9780142002087

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2002

Synopsis

A freelance operative for Britain's MI5, Harry Fielding is given the task of cleaning up the crime scene where a murder committed by a high-ranking cabinet minister and ensuring that the guilty man does not become a suspect in the killing. Original.

About this title

About the Author:

Philip Davison was born in 1957 in Dublin, where he still lives. He has a background in film editing and has written short stories and plays for stage and television, as well as three previous novels published before he created Harry Fielding.

From Booklist:

Forget the knee-jerk comparisons to le Carre; this oddly compelling blue-collar spy novel, the debut effort from the talented Davison, has the feel of George Higgins' Friends of Eddie Coyle--gritty, low-life pathos, tightly written and utterly unromantic. Harry Fielding is an "understrapper," a freelancer for MI5, the British equivalent of the FBI. He lives an anonymous, dreary life, spying on government types, breaking and entering, doing the odd wiretap--no "wet work" and nothing particularly important. That all changes when Harry happens to witness two murders, one involving a cabinet minister and requiring an elaborate cover-up. Gradually, Harry finds himself troubled by the corruption around him and begins to look for a way out of the morass. Tone is everything here; Harry moves as if in a self-induced trance, somewhere between Camus' Mersault and Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Harry's London is a dreary, soul-stultifying place, and his attempt to escape seems to offer only another kind of defeat. A muted, minimalist morality tale without a moral. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0142002089
• ISBN 13: 9780142002087
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208