Product Description

'My wife of more than forty-five years shot herself yesterday afternoon. At least that is what the police assume ... of course I know that she did nothing of the kind ... It was I who killed her'

It is twenty-four hours since the death of James Farrell's wife at Seton Castle and as it grows dark he tries to make sense of a life only recently understood; and to explain how he, by no means a violent man, has come to kill in cold blood after half a century of contented married life.

But answers don't come easily. And explanation involves a return to the events of five decades ago, when as a talented young violinist he fell in love with Ella - his wife's cousin - and she with him. He must remember their love in all its power and fragility; and he must try to understand the test she set him and the tragic consequences of his success for them both.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #75571 in Books
• Published on: 2000-01-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
"My wife of more than forty-five years shot herself yesterday afternoon. At least that is what the police assume, and I am playing the part of grieving widower with enthusiasm and success...It was I who killed her." Thus begins The Drowning People, the media-hyped first novel by 20-year-old Oxford undergraduate Richard Mason. Your typical murder mystery it is not, for we are given the identity of the killer--the "who?"--immediately. The puzzle to be solved in this introspective novel is "why?"--why did 70-year-old James Farrell murder his wife Sarah? The answer, as it develops from his own confession, delves nearly 50 years into the past and roams from Prague to London, from France to a remote castle in Cornwall. At its core is an intoxicating love affair set amidst the stifling world of English aristocracy: James at 22, a talented musician and hopeless romantic and Ella Harewood, his wife's cousin, an American heiress to an English title, trapped by her heritage and destiny. A beautifully written exploration of self-absorbed first love and its tragic consequences, Richard Mason's The Drowning People soars beyond the highest of expectations placed upon it. --Shannon Bingham