The Blackmailer

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What to expect

Bloomsbury presents The Blackmailer by Isabel Colegate, read by Antonia Beamish

The glittering, sharp and sinister work of one of our most incisive and wickedly funny satirists; 'Isabel Colegate has no rival' (The Times)

'What we feel for each other is really a passion for power,' said Judith. 'We want to destroy each other by making the other fall in love with us.'

Judith Lane, not-quite-beautiful but charmingly serious, is the young widow of the war hero Anthony Lane, and an editor at the successful if rather rakish publisher Hanescu Lane & Co. Ltd. But one evening the harmonious routine of Judith’s life is interrupted when she receives her first visit from Baldwin Reeves, who reveals that Anthony’s wartime adventures were not quite as glorious as the newspaper reports would have her believe. To protect Anthony’s family from the scandal, Judith reluctantly acquiesces to the repellent but attractive Reeves’s demands – but both blackmailer and blackmailee soon find themselves out of their depth in ways they could not have anticipated.

Darkly funny, strangely sexy, and glittering with Isabel Colegate’s scalpel-sharp wit, The Blackmailer is a savage and sinister comic classic.

Critics Review

Ought to be a household name
Eleanor Catton
Combine the slightly offbeat sensibility of Muriel Spark with the milieu of an Iris Murdoch novel and you’ll have something of an idea about this witty tale of extortion and romance, all played out against the gin-soaked backdrop of the 1950s London literary scene
BBC, 10 lost books you should know
As a novelist of English manners, Isabel Colegate has no rival
The Times
Flowing and unpretentious. She tells an excellent tale
Daily Telegraph

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