The Blue Afternoon

The Blue Afternoon by William Boyd. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780679432951.

From the acclaimed author of Brazzaville Beach and The Blue Afternoon, a new novel, set in present-day London, which demonstrates the superbly plotted storytelling that has earned William Boyd his reputation as a writer whose "eccentric wit and restless intelligence exert a powerful appeal" (New York Times Book Review). One cold winters morning, Lorimer Black-- insurance adjuster, young, good-looking, on the rise--goes out on a perfectly ordinary business appointment, finds a hanged man and realizes that his life is about to be turned upside down. The elements at play: a beautiful actress glimpsed in a passing taxi . . . an odd new business associate whose hiring, firing and rehiring make little sense . . . a rock musician who is losing his mind--and a web of fraud in which virtually everyone Lorimer Black knows has been caught and in which he finds himself increasingly entangled. Boyd at his urbane and mesmerizing best.