Lying Crying Dying - Softcover

DOMINIC MARTELL

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0575066180 ISBN 13: 9780575066182

Publisher: ORION, 1998

Synopsis

Lying Crying Dying was hailed by British suspense master Lionel Davidson as "the Thriller Nouveau-- of deceit, betrayal, tears...one of the very best of the late nineties." The novel introduces Pascual Rose, a repentant ex-terrorist trying to make sense of his life after defecting and selling out his former comrades in the European terrorist underground of the 1980's. Pascual is lying low in Barcelona when a nova explodes in his cosmos-- Katixa reappears. She is the only one he never gave up, the one woman he ever loved. Katixa wants out now too, and she is on the run with a suitcase full of cash hijacked from an ETA kidnapping to start a new life somewhere far away-- with Pascual. But nothing is what it seems, and when Pascual realizes that Katixa is lying to him, can the crying and the dying be far behind?

About this title

From the Author

Between 1991 and 1995 I published four crime novels set in Chicago, under the name Sam Reaves.  They were reasonably well received, but they didn't set any records. After the fourth one, my editor at Putnam asked me to send her "something different."
I took her at her word and came up with Lying Crying Dying, a thriller about Pascual, a remorseful ex-terrorist living under a new identity in the great cosmopolitan city of Barcelona, trying and failing to escape his past.  It was, you could say, a little off the wall.  It was about a Europe the tourists mostly miss, the Europe of outcasts, seething social tensions and political extremism. But mostly it was about a man trying to atone for the bad things he'd done.  It was moody and dark.
My editor at Putnam said it was "too different" from what I'd done before.  So I sent it to my British publisher, and somebody over there liked it.  Lying Crying Dying was published by Victor Gollancz in 1996, and Orion published two sequels, The Republic of Night and Gitana.  And because Sam Reaves "sounded so American", I acquired a new name: Dominic Martell.

From the Inside Flap

Pascual: His name was legend. A courier for a network of radical groups that spread terror across Europe, he had defected to the enemy, and in the hands of Mossad and the CIA had become the single most damaging secret weapon in their counterterrorist operations. Then he had disappeared. Cadging meals and sleeping in flophouses, Pascual has shed his past in the teeming portside alleys of Barcelona. While he has begun to find something like peace of mind, the man who broke the covert world of international terrorism wide open cannot entirely escape his memories. Neither alcohol nor a plump widow's fleshly charms enable him to forget the beautiful Katixa, the one terrorist agent he did not betray--and whom he has no hope of ever seeing again. Or so he thinks. On the run from both the police and an ETA band of killers, Katixa bursts back into Pascual's life with a suitcase full of cash appropriated from the ETA and a one-way ticket out of Spain. She professes her love, and Pascual's better judgment doesn't stand a chance. To redeem both their lives, Pascual dusts off his old skills of subterfuge and deceit. The lying has again begun; the crying--and the dying--yet to come.

About this edition

• Publisher: ORION
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0575066180
• ISBN 13: 9780575066182
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240