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Death of a Foreign Gentleman

Steven Carroll

$32.99

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English
HARPER360
03 April 2024
Series: Stephen Minter

ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- This is promised as the first in a new series featuring Detective Sergeant Stephen Minter, and I hope there will be more to come! It is 1947 Cambridge, and a distinguished German philosopher and supposed ex-Nazi, Martin Friedrich, is a victim of a hit and run accident. Or was it? Minter (who made an appearance in the last book of Carroll's Eliot Quartet – not that the reader needs to have read it to follow this) is a careful and weary detective in an England that is yet to recover from the ravages of the recent war. As he unravels the circumstances behind Friedrich's death, his own past surfaces – and that of other people who would rather that the secrets of the past stay there… Carroll's literary style can be quite formal at times, but in this book is less so. It's still assured and careful writing, but this fits the philosophical undertones without interfering in the story, the characterisation or the unfolding solution. Lindy

From Miles Franklin Award-winning writer Steven Carroll comes the first book in a series of post-war literary crime novels featuring Detective Sergeant Stephen Minter.

Cambridge, UK, 1947. Martin Friedrich, a German philosopher, is cycling through an intersection on his way to give a lecture when a speeding car strikes and kills him. Shortly afterwards, Detective Sergeant Stephen Minter, an Austrian-born cockney Jew, whose parents were interned during the war as enemy aliens, stands over the body of Friedrich, contemplating the age-old question – who did it?

Friedrich might be one of the finest minds of his age, but he's problematic; arrogant and a womaniser, he was also a member of the Nazi Party in the 1930s. As Stephen is soon to discover, there is no shortage of suspects. Friedrich was hated by almost everybody, even those who loved him. Is there any sense to his death, or was it just a case of rotten, random luck?

Has the universe spoken? Or are there more sinister factors at work?

From one of Australia's finest, most critically acclaimed writers, Death of a Foreign Gentleman is a playful, poignant and absorbing literary crime novel, with shades of The Third Man and Brighton Rock, which examines the question of how to live a meaningful life in an indifferent, random, post-God world.

'A novel of remarkable poise, which marries its weighty concerns and deeply felt sensibility to a playful delight in the very real pleasures of the genre it so deftly inhabits.' The Age
By:  
Imprint:   HARPER360
Country of Publication:   Australia
Dimensions:   Height: 235mm,  Width: 154mm,  Spine: 22mm
Weight:   348g
ISBN:   9781460764589
ISBN 10:   1460764587
Series:   Stephen Minter
Pages:   288
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Steven Carroll is the multi-award winning author of fifteen novels including A World of Other People (2013), which was the joint winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Award, and The Time We Have Taken (2007), which was the winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the SE Asia and Pacific Region and the Miles Franklin Award in 2008. Forever Young (2015) was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award and the Prime Minister's Literary Award in 2016. A New England Affair (2017) was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award in 2018 and The Year of the Beast (2019) was longlisted for the 2020 Voss Literary Prize. His most recent novel, Goodnight, Vivienne, Goodnight was longlisted for the 2022 ARA Historical Novel Prize and for the 2023 Voss Literary Prize. Steven lives in Melbourne with his partner, the author Fiona Capp, and their son.

Reviews for Death of a Foreign Gentleman

ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- This is promised as the first in a new series featuring Detective Sergeant Stephen Minter, and I hope there will be more to come! It is 1947 Cambridge, and a distinguished German philosopher and supposed ex-Nazi, Martin Friedrich, is a victim of a hit and run accident. Or was it? Minter (who made an appearance in the last book of Carroll's Eliot Quartet – not that the reader needs to have read it to follow this) is a careful and weary detective in an England that is yet to recover from the ravages of the recent war. As he unravels the circumstances behind Friedrich's death, his own past surfaces – and that of other people who would rather that the secrets of the past stay there… Carroll's literary style can be quite formal at times, but in this book is less so. It's still assured and careful writing, but this fits the philosophical undertones without interfering in the story, the characterisation or the unfolding solution. Lindy


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