UNCOVER THE VERY BEST IN CRIME AND THRILLER WRITING
London, November, 1956.
DI Ted Stratton is tasked with investigating the murder of Jeremy Lloyd, a strange young man with a taste for esoteric religion. Stratton’s enquiries lead him to Suffolk, where the mysterious Mr Roth has founded a Foundation for Spiritual Understanding.
Apparently Lloyd had believed himself marked out for great things. But at the Foundation, Stratton meets twelve-year-old Michael who is proclaimed as the next incarnation in a long line of spiritual leaders that stretches back to Christ and Buddha. He is rumoured amongst Roth’s disciples to have been immaculately conceived, but the woman who is said to be his mother, and whose photograph was cherished by Lloyd, has disappeared.
When a woman’s body is found in woods nearby, Stratton initially assumes he has found ‘the mother’, but the reality turns out to be far stranger and far more terrifying…
DI Ted Stratton is tasked with investigating the murder of Jeremy Lloyd, a strange young man with a taste for esoteric religion. Stratton’s enquiries lead him to Suffolk, where the mysterious Mr Roth has founded a Foundation for Spiritual Understanding.
Apparently Lloyd had believed himself marked out for great things. But at the Foundation, Stratton meets twelve-year-old Michael who is proclaimed as the next incarnation in a long line of spiritual leaders that stretches back to Christ and Buddha. He is rumoured amongst Roth’s disciples to have been immaculately conceived, but the woman who is said to be his mother, and whose photograph was cherished by Lloyd, has disappeared.
When a woman’s body is found in woods nearby, Stratton initially assumes he has found ‘the mother’, but the reality turns out to be far stranger and far more terrifying…
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Reviews
'Wilson herself really excels in the passages of poetic description' Independent.
'An excellent thought-provoking read' Literary Review.
'This book was so brilliantly written that I kept having to look up from reading to reassure myself I wasn't back there' Promoting Crime.
'A Willing Victim is a complex, richly-textured novel, beautifully written' Shots Mag.
'A top-notch police procedural' Sunday Telegraph.
'An intelligent, thought provoking crime novel with a particularly poignant ending' The Spectator.
'Extraordinary mastery of the atmosphere, dialogue and morality of London's past ... a subtle writer who achieves her grip on the reader by the accumulation of little gems of setting and characterization' The Times.
'A skilful and moving tale of faith and madness, elegantly dressed up as a police procedural' Mail on Sunday.
'Brilliantly written and scrupulously researched. Some historical fiction trades in nostalgia. This does not. Instead it details a period that few of us would willingly return to live in but which we really ought not to ignore' Reviewing the Evidence.
