Night Windows

(Paperback)

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Description

Someone has stolen Patrick Balfour's identity. A successful headmaster of a London school, a regular broadcaster and a writer of historical novels, as well as having a fairly spicy private life, Balfour is the object of some unsurprising envy. Yet who would be so malicious as to commit identity fraud and frame Patrick as a thief and a paedophile, using his national insurance number and impersonating his handwriting As Patrick is teased by a series of letters, it becomes apparent that his adversary is certainly better-read than him and he is sent off on a tense literary chase, picking up clues from Kafka's The Trial to R L Stevenson and to Joseph Clark, a 17th Century contortionist. Patrick's morale begins to collapse - the police don't believe him and his daughter rejects him. Desperate, he decides he must pursue his pursuer.

Reviews

'In this sophisticated thriller, [Smith] manages to pull off the difficult trick of maintaining pace without losing richness of character.' Mail; 'Could have been the screenplay for a Hitchcock film... should appeal to anyone who has ever been at school'. Sunday Telegraph; 'Night Windows is a very neat kind of thriller. While the plot compels you to find the identity of the thief, it's the identity of the victim which becomes the anxious focus of the novel.' Irish News

Author Bio

Jonathan Smith is the author of SUMMER IN FEBRUARY (published by Abacus) and THE LEARNING GAME. He also wrote THE HEAD MAN, a series of plays for Radio 4 and recently THE LAST BARK OF THE BULLDOG (about Churchill), which was one of Radio 4's most popular