Must each man kill the thing he loves? For Victor Cox, a professor of film history, the Hollywood films noirs of the 1940s and 1950s are more real than his daily life. When his wife is found drowned, Cox is the first murder suspect. He falls in love with a student who looks like the 1920s film star Louise Brooks, but she disappears at a Belgian seaside resort. Smeared in lipstick in their hotel room are the words "No Sale", the same words Elizabeth Taylor wrote on a mirror in Butterfield 8 (she won her first Oscar in that film). Subsequently, a series of gruesome killings of young women, all modeled on violent deaths in films that he knows and loves, lead the police back to Cox, who starts to doubt his own sanity and innocence. With its stylish writing, pointed references to cinema classics, and blend of horror and humor, this is a powerful psychological thriller. It won the Diamond Bullet Award, the Dagger award for Belgium.
About the AuthorPatrick Conrad, born 1945 in Antwerp, is a Flemish poet, screenwriter, film director and novelist. He directed over twenty films for cinema and television, including - selected for the Cannes Festival - Mascara with Charlotte Rampling and Michael Sarazin. He lives in Provence, in the south of France. Limousine, a previous novel, is being made into a film with Kelsey Grammar, to be released in 2012.
ReviewsPraise for Patrick Conrad's "Limousine": "Unremitting black humour." - Literary Review "Exquisite, exciting, stomach-churning, sombre, gruesome, hilarious." - De Morgen - Review "The punishment has rarely been made to fit the crime with such horrifying literalism as in this novel." -- The Times
Book InformationISBN 9781904738978
Author Patrick ConradFormat Paperback
Page Count 275
Imprint Bitter Lemon PressPublisher Bitter Lemon Press