In ‘Whispers of Immortality‘ by T.S. Eliot we find the following lines:
‘Webster was much possessed by death, And saw the skull beneath the skin, And breastless creatures underground, Leaned backward with a lipless grin’.
Peter James might equally be described as ‘possessed by death’ because the word dead appears in the title of all ten of his detective Roy Grace novels. Mortality arrives in many a gruesome guise in the Brighton area. In this latest, ‘ Want you Dead‘, Red Westwood meets handsome, charming and rich Bryce Laurent through an online dating agency. There is an instant attraction. But as their love blossoms, the truth about his past, and his dark side, begins to emerge. Everything he has told Red about himself turns out to be a tissue of lies, and her infatuation with him gradually turns to terror. Within a year, and under police protection, she evicts him from her flat and her life. But Red’s nightmare is only just beginning. For Bryce is obsessed with her, and he intends to destroy everything and everyone she has ever known and loved – and then her too . . .
Oh! Fortuna!
400 pages in Macmillan
ISBN 978-0230760585
Peter James