The Order of Death

(Paperback, Main)

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Description

Lieutenant Fred O'Connor of the NYPD Narcotics Bureau has a secret: an apartment on Central Park West, jointly purchased with ill-gotten gains by Fred and a corrupt fellow officer. The place is a refuge for Fred from a society he finds repellently ill-ordered. But his own equilibrium is disturbed, first by a series of brutal murders of his colleagues, then by the appearance at the apartment's door of wan Leo Smith, who claims to be the cop-killer...'Fleetwood is a compulsive pattern-maker, and a master of the ambiguous thread which finally pulls all together. It is a rich, gruesome, irresistibly readable book.' Times'Fleetwood can write like a dream... and really get into your head. He reaches down and stirs with venomous delight the nameless, faceless things swimming far below the level of consciousness.' Scotsman

Author Bio

Hugh Fleetwood was born in Chichester, Sussex, in 1944. Aged 21 he moved to Italy and lived there for fourteen years, during which time he exhibited his paintings and wrote a number of novels and story collections, originally published by Hamish Hamilton, beginning with A Painter of Flowers (1972). His second novel, The Girl Who Passed for Normal (1973), won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize. His fifth, The Order of Death (1977), was adapted into a 1983 film starring Harvey Keitel and John Lydon. In 1978 he published his first collection of short stories, The Beast. Subsequent collections have included Fictional Lives (1980) and The Man Who Went Down With His Ship (1988). He currently lives in London, and continues to work both as writer and painter.