The Secret Life of E. Robert Pendleton

Paperback

Condition: Good

For Robert Pendleton a professor clinging to tenure and living in the shambles of his once-bright literary career death seems to be the only remaining option. But his suicide attempt fails halted at the last moment by the intervention of Adi Wiltshire a graduate student battling her own demons of failure and thwarted ambition. During Pendleton's long convalescence Adi discovers a novel hidden in his basement: a brilliant semi-autobiographical story with a gruesome child-murder at its core. The publication of Scream causes a storm of publicity: a whirlwind into which Adi Horowitz and the still-incapacitated Pendleton are thrust. The novel is treated as an existential masterpiece and looks set to bring its author the success he's always sought - when ironically he is no longer in a condition to appreciate it - until questions begin to be asked about its content: in particular about the uncanny resemblance between Pendleton's fictional crime and a real-life unresolved local murder. Enter Jon Ryder a world-weary detective who could have walked off the pages of a police thriller and the hunt for the murderer is on.