No Sale

For Victor Cox, a professor of film history, the Hollywood films noirs of the 1940s and 1950s are more real than his daily life. When his wife is found drowned, Cox is the first murder suspect. He falls in love with a student who looks like the 1920s film star Louise Brooks, but she disappears at a Belgian seaside resort. Smeared in lipstick in their hotel room are the words "No Sale," the same words Elizabeth Taylor wrote on a mirror in Butterfield 8. Subsequently, a series of gruesome killings of young women, all modeled on violent deaths in films that he knows and loves, lead the police back to Cox, who starts to doubt his own sanity and innocence.

With its stylish writing, pointed references to cinema classics, and blend of horror and humor, this is a powerful psychological thriller. It won the Diamond Bullet Award, the Edgar Award for Belgium.

Patrick Conrad, born in 1945 in Antwerp, is a Flemish poet, screenwriter, film director, and novelist. He lives in Provence, in the south of France. Limousine, a previous novel, is being made into a film with Kelsey Grammar, to be released in 2012.

Patrick Conrad: Patrick Conrad (Antwerp, 16 July 1945) is a Flemish poet, screenwriter and novelist, and one of the founders of The Pink Poets. He also directed about twenty movies for cinema and television, including – selected for the Cannes Festival – Mascara with Charlotte Rampling and Michael Sarazin.). He lives in Provence, in the south of France. In 2008, 'No Sale' won the Diamond Bullet Award.
Jonathan Lynn: Jonathan Lynn is a Reuters correspondent and editor and studied translation at university. ‘No Sale’ is the first novel he has translated. He lives in London.