Stephanie - Hardcover

Winston Graham

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 185592059X ISBN 13: 9781855920590

Publisher: Chapmans Publishers, 1992

Synopsis

This is a tale of a carefree student, happy until she discovers her lover leads a double life. Her father, who'd fight for justice even if it cost him his life and a young Indian are also featured. The fate of these characters is explored.

About this title

About the Author

Winston Mawdsley Graham OBE was an English novelist, best known for the series of historical novels about the Poldarks. Graham was born in Manchester in 1908, but moved to Perranporth, Cornwall when he was seventeen. His first novel, The House with the Stained Glass Windows was published in 1933. His first 'Poldark' novel, Ross Poldark, was published in 1945, and was followed by eleven further titles, the last of which, Bella Poldark, came out in 2002. The novels were set in Cornwall, especially in and around Perranporth, where Graham spent much of his life, and were made into a BBC television series in the 1970s. It was so successful that vicars moved or cancelled church services rather than try to hold them when Poldark was showing.

Aside from the Poldark series, Graham's most successful work was Marnie, a thriller which was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1964. Hitchcock had originally hoped that Grace Kelly would return to films to play the lead and she had agreed in principle, but the plan failed when the principality of Monaco realised that the heroine was a thief and sexually repressed. The leads were eventually taken by Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery. Five of Graham's other books were filmed, including The Walking Stick, Night Without Stars and Take My Life. Graham wrote a history of the Spanish Armadas and an historical novel, The Grove of Eagles, based in that period. He was also an accomplished writer of suspense novels. His autobiography, Memoirs of a Private Man, was published by Macmillan in 2003. He had completed work on it just weeks before he died. Graham was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in 1983 was honoured with the OBE.

From Publishers Weekly

This atmospheric suspense thriller by the author of the Poldark series and Marnie roams from India to England. James Locke, a disabled WW II hero and gardener extraordinaire, refuses to accept an inquest's ruling that his daughter Stephanie's death was "by misadventure." A "cheerful rebel" of 21, Stephanie had taken up with 38-year-old, twice-married Errol Colton, a photographer involved with international "tourist development." On a business trip to sweltering, sultry Goa, India, Stephanie discovers that Errol's briefcase holds a suspicious wad of money along with receipts for flax (code jargon for heroin). At the same time, young law clerk Narish Prasad is forced by a loan shark who backed his gambling debuts to ingest 80 condom-clad packets of heroin to smuggle into England. Their stories collide when Locke pursues the trail of an "accumulation of untoward circumstances," including a grammatically incorrect suicide note and a long-ago murder in Edinburgh. Intriguing characters range from a philanthropist who is about to receive Oxford University's highest honor to nefarious underworld thugs who are involved in a drug ring that stretches from India to Corfu to England. Graham's page-turner combines characters with rich dimensions and spiraling plot twists, and the penultimate scene in Cardiff, Wales's Llandaff Cathedral is mortifyingly trenchant.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Chapmans Publishers
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 185592059X
• ISBN 13: 9781855920590
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320