Alice Thompson turns to familiar home-ground and a new genre for her new novel
Blackwell Bookshop South Bridge, Sunday, June 27, 2010 at 6:15pm
Alice Thompson promotes The Existential Detective.
The private detective William Blake is hired by an eccentric scientist to investigate the whereabouts of his amnesiac missing wife, Louise. Blake finds himself entangled in layers of deceptions and disappearances that lead him inexorably back to an unsolved mystery in his own past: the loss of his ten-year old daughter Emily. The case takes him to the brothels, nightclubs and amusement arcades of Portobello. Identities become confused as his sexual obsession with a nightclub singer becomes entwined with sightings of Louise, his own tortuous memories, and new visions of the lost Emily. With echoes of Don't Look Now, but peopled with characters that could only come from an Alice Thompson novel, The Existential Detective is a surreal and dreamlike story, marking a return to style and a subversion of the crime fiction genre that will thrill her fans old and new. Alice Thompson was born and brought up in Edinburgh, and lives in Portobello. She was the keyboard player with post-punk eighties band The Woodentops, and joint winner, with Graham Swift, of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction for her first novel, Justine. Her second novel, Pandora's Box, was shortlisted for the Stakis prize for Scottish Writer of the Year. Her other novels are Pharos, and most recently, The Falconer (Two Ravens Press, 2008). Alice is a past winner of a Creative Scotland award, and has been writer in residence for Shetland. This event is ticketed, but tickets are FREE. Tickets are available from the front desk at Blackwell, Edinburgh. For more information please contact Ann Landmann on 0131 622 8206 or events.edinburgh@blackwell.co.uk. (oxygen_142)… (more)
The private detective William Blake is hired by an eccentric scientist to investigate the whereabouts of his amnesiac missing wife, Louise. Blake finds himself entangled in layers of deceptions and disappearances that lead him inexorably back to an unsolved mystery in his own past: the loss of his ten-year old daughter Emily. The case takes him to the brothels, nightclubs and amusement arcades of Portobello. Identities become confused as his sexual obsession with a nightclub singer becomes entwined with sightings of Louise, his own tortuous memories, and new visions of the lost Emily. With echoes of Don't Look Now, but peopled with characters that could only come from an Alice Thompson novel, The Existential Detective is a surreal and dreamlike story, marking a return to style and a subversion of the crime fiction genre that will thrill her fans old and new. Alice Thompson was born and brought up in Edinburgh, and lives in Portobello. She was the keyboard player with post-punk eighties band The Woodentops, and joint winner, with Graham Swift, of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction for her first novel, Justine. Her second novel, Pandora's Box, was shortlisted for the Stakis prize for Scottish Writer of the Year. Her other novels are Pharos, and most recently, The Falconer (Two Ravens Press, 2008). Alice is a past winner of a Creative Scotland award, and has been writer in residence for Shetland. This event is ticketed, but tickets are FREE. Tickets are available from the front desk at Blackwell, Edinburgh. For more information please contact Ann Landmann on 0131 622 8206 or events.edinburgh@blackwell.co.uk. (oxygen_142)… (more)
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