Book description
Marjorie had never seen a dead body until she got home one tranquil
summer evening and found her sister Dot lying on the kitchen floor in
a pretty dress, with her head in the oven. She looked peaceful, as if
she was asleep. Their mother suspects, however, that Dot's death was
far from natural. What's more, she knows who the killer is - and she
is determined to make him suffer. So slowly and meticulously, she
plots her revenge. After all, who would suspect a neatly dressed,
grey-haired widow of anything? And what could possibly go wrong?
The Pursued, C. S. Forester's dark, twisted tale of murder,
lust and retribution, was written in 1935, but its typescript
manuscript was lost. More than seven decades later, it has now been
rediscovered and is published for the first time. It is a novel years
ahead of its time; rewriting the traditions of crime fiction to create
a gripping psychological portrayal of obsession, jealousy, torment and
the grim underside of suburban London life.
Cecil Scott Forester was the pen name of Cecil Louis Troughton Smith
(27 August
1899
- 2 April 1966), an English novelist who rose to fame with tales of
naval warfare. His most notable works were the 11-book Horatio
Hornblower series, depicting a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic
era, and
The African Queen
(1935; filmed in 1951 by John Huston). His novels
A Ship of the Line
and
Flying Colours
were jointly awarded the 1938 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for
fiction. He began his career with the crime novels
Payment Deferred
and
Plain Murder
, now reissued in Penguin Modern Classics along with
The Pursued
, which was lost for over 60 years.
