A Willing Victim
Laura Wilson
A Willing Victim
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...
3.3 out of 5 based on 3 reviews
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Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Fiction |
| Genre |
General Fiction, Crime, Thrillers & Mystery |
| Format |
Paperback |
| Pages |
400 |
| RRP |
|
| Date of Publication |
July 2012 |
| ISBN |
978-1849163118 |
| Publisher |
Quercus |
| |
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...
A Capital Crime by Laura Wilson.
An Empty Death by Laura Wilson.
Reviews
The Daily Telegraph
Julia Handford
“A top-notch police procedural.”
03/06/2012
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The Times
Peter Millar
“Laura Wilson is yet another exponent of the flourishing nostalgia business. A Willing Victim is set in the 1950s against a background of the Hungarian uprising, the Suez fiasco and fears of apocalyptic war, a fertile landscape for the blossoming of exotic cults. ”
16/06/2012
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Times Literary Supplement
Natasha Cooper
“In her afterword, she writes that she has “left out a lot of the dottier stuff on the grounds of implausibility – there are still some things I can hardly believe myself, even though I was witness to them”. This seems a pity, as does a certain (perhaps necessary) coolness with which she tells her appalling story ... This is a powerful and disturbing story, full of an anger that is wholly understandable and has perhaps not yet been fully released.”
06/07/2012
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