by Leslie Forbes (Author)
Fish, Blood and Bone is Leslie Forbes' brilliant second novel. When Claire Fleetwood, a young American forensic photographer, inherits a large house and garden in London's East End from relatives she never knew she had, she imagines it will be a slice of the English dream. But after the brutal murder of her best friend Sally Rivers, Claire learns that her inheritance involves more than she wanted or bargained for. Desperate to find a motive for her friend's death, or at least someone to blame for the things that can befall ordinary people, Claire is impelled to join a scientific expedition led by her cousin Jack Ironstone, one of the men she suspects of being responsible for Sally's murder. Her journey leads from Jack the Ripper's claustrophobic Whitechapel to the Fleetwoods' murky roots in India's opium trade and the wild 'paradise' valleys of Tibet. It parallels a route taken during Britain's great 19th-century triangulation of the Himalayas by Claire's distant relative Magda Ironstone and a mysterious Indian botanist. As Claire painstakingly reconstructs a triangular love affair she imagines took place, the contemporary story is overtaken to deadly effect by Magda's.Written with all the sophistication and intelligence that was so dazzling in Bombay Ice, in Fish, Blood and Bone Leslie Forbes weaves together a mysterious story of three families, a love affair and a series of murders into a wonderfully haunting novel about hidden pasts and forgotten crimes.
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 384
Edition: First edition
Publisher: W&N
Published: 24 Aug 2000
ISBN 10: 0297645803
ISBN 13: 9780297645801
Book Overview: * Candidate for all Fiction promotions, including Waterstone's Book of the Month * First novel Bombay Ice was a top ten bestseller and received wonderful reviews: 'A dazzling first novel', Sunday Telegraph; 'A massive eclectic triumph, as lushly baroque as Peter Greenaway, as cynically hardboiled as updated Raymond Chandler and as acutely satiric as the works of V. S. Naipaul', Toronto Globe and Mail; 'Only bribery or collective insanity could prevent it from being shortlisted for best first thriller of the year', Sunday Times * Bombay Ice was the Late Book on Radio 4 for 2 weeks. * Bombay Ice was sold in 9 countries outside the UK. * Bombay Ice film option sold to Warner Brothers.