Book Description

A London artist becomes the victim of a stalker in this “creepy” novel “with satisfying fits of the shivers” from the award-winning author of Easy Peasy (The Sunday Times). In London’s prestigious National Portrait Gallery, an exhibition of Connie Benson’s art is set to open. It’s quite an event considering that the reclusive portraitist hasn’t left her home on the North Norfolk coast for the past thirty years—not since her lover Patrick Mount disappeared. Mount, an eccentric guru who claimed to have discovered an elixir of bliss, is just as famous—perhaps even more so after his presumed death. Tonight, Connie’s masterful portrait of him, completed on the night he vanished, will finally be unveiled. But it’s arousing more than a love of art in Mount’s most secretive and devoted disciple. Tony, a violent ex-con, never met Mount, but he’s committed the famous man’s autobiography to memory. He’s collected every known photograph of him, and every word ever written by, or about, him. Except for one prized possession that has been forever out of reach: Mount’s key to bliss. He’s prepared to trap Connie in his secret world to find it. But Tony is soon to discover the consequences of obsession—because he isn’t the only one with things to hide. The recipient of the Somerset Maugham Award, Lesley Glaister is “an author for whom writing and storytelling is an unstoppable passion, as strong as a rush of blood to the head” (The Independent). “Crime writing of the highest order.” —The Sunday Times “Before Gillian Flynn, there was Lesley Glaister.” —Harper’s Bazaar