Throughout his life accountant Mike Shaw has played it safe, kept his
head down, and avoided risk. His girlfriend Brenda is a secretary. Their
idea of a night on the town is to visit the local pizza parlour. But
when Mike meets Laura in a bar off The Strand, their lives are
irrevocably changed. Small, sexy, smart - and utterly dangerous - Laura
instantly spellbinds Mike and leads him into a world of moral depravity,
dominated by the sinister presence of her powerful and rich father,
Harold Benton. Dressed in safari suits, dining in West End restaurants,
Benton drinks only the best of wines and whiskies, imitates Richard
Burton, and quotes French poet Baudelaire at every opportunity. He is
also without conscience, on a hell-bent mission to mould others to his
likeness. Dispatching Baudelaire is about what can happen to the
blandest of men when he is seduced by money, power and sex. As we follow
Mike on his journey to the heart of darkness, we come to discover that
there are few more dangerous animals than an Englishman off balance. Set
against the paranoia of early 1990s post-Thatcher London, this is yet
another addictive page-turner from Ken Bruen, author of the bestselling
Vixen, The Guards and The Killing of the Tinkers - one of the critically
acclaimed greats of modern crime and suspense fiction.
