The Crime Writer

In 1964, the eccentric American novelist Patricia Highsmith is hiding out in a cottage in Suffolk, to concentrate on her writing and escape her fans. She has another motive too - a secret romance with a married lover based in London. Unfortunately it soon becomes clear that all her demons have come with her. Prowlers, sexual obsessives, frauds, imposters, suicides and murderers: the tropes of her fictions clamour for her attention, rudely intruding on her peaceful Suffolk retreat. After the arrival of Ginny, an enigmatic young journalist bent on interviewing her, events take a catastrophic turn. Except, as always in Highsmith's troubled life, matters are not quite as they first appear . . . Masterfully recreating Highsmith's much exercised fantasies of murder and madness, Jill Dawson probes the darkest reaches of the imagination in this novel - at once a brilliant portrait of a writer and an atmospheric, emotionally charged, riveting tale.

About the Author :
Jill Dawson is the author of Trick of the Light, Magpie, Fred and Edie, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award and the Orange Prize, Wild Boy, Watch Me Disappear, which was longlisted for the Orange Prize, The Great Lover, a Richard and Judy Summer Read in 2009, Lucky Bunny and The Tell-Tale Heart. In addition she has edited six anthologies of short stories and poetry. Born in Durham, Jill Dawson grew up in Yorkshire. She has held many Fellowships, including the Creative Writing Fellowship at the University of East Anglia, where she taught on the MA in Creative Writing course. In 2006 she received an honorary doctorate in recognition of her work. She lives in the Fens with her husband, two sons and foster daughter.

Review :
Praise for Jill Dawson's The Tell-Tale Heart: - - Immediately engrossing . . . Dawson navigates this half-mystical territory with a freshness and wit that belie a seasoned novelist's careful skill . . . It seems that the human heart, like the richly evoked Fens which the author knows so well, holds more secrets than we might think. - The Times Dawson knows how to pluck the heartstrings too. The moment when Drew's mother listens to her dead son's heart beating in Patrick's chest is devastating . . . the flashback leading up to the hanging of one of Drew's forefathers is one of the highlights in a narrative that keeps you guessing. - Sunday Telegraph [A] searching and gently philosophical novel poised on the edge of the darkness that surrounds a human life . . . Perhaps a better life has been swapped for a lesser life; but, as this moving and intriguing novel suggests, the final sum amounts to a lot more than zero. - Literary Review A tender and thoughtful novel which explores some fundamental questions about identity and the symbolism of the heart. - Daily Mail Dawson . . . is an elegant but easy writer. She swiftly hooks the reader in with strong, convincing narrative voices, pacy dialogue, carefully crafted prose and an engagingly dramatic plot . . . A thought-provoking [book] about identity, relationships, fate and what we would change if given a second