The Company of Strangers (51 page)
Read The Company of Strangers Online
Authors: Robert Wilson
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General
I would like to thank Col. Peter Taylor (retd), Mrs Pam Taylor and Elwin Taylor for helping me with books, maps and information on Berlin in the 1960s and 1970s.
ROBERT WILSON
Robert Wilson was born in 1957. A graduate of Oxford University, he has worked in shipping, advertising and trading in Africa. He has travelled in Asia and Africa and has lived in Greece and West Africa. He is married and writes from an isolated farmhouse in Portugal.
He was awarded the CWA Gold Dagger Award for Fiction for his fifth novel,
A Small Death in Lisbon.
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‘Wilson’s narrative is calm, chilly and engrossing. He writes with energy, appetite and a kind of unflinching compassion that allows him to scan horrors without excusing them. It is a rare talent and it gives his book purpose, muscle and stature’
PHILIP OAKES
,
Literary Review
‘Displaying once again Wilson’s gifts for atmospheric depiction of place, this ambitious experiment is streets ahead of most other thrillers’
JOHN DUGDALE
,
Sunday Times
‘A big, meaty novel of love and deceit, a thriller which spans Europe from the final flickers of the Second World War to the collapse of the Berlin Wall…Wilson writes telling descriptions and precisely achieved set pieces. And his sense of place is terrific…with this novel Robert Wilson vaults to the front rank of thriller writers’
PETER GUTTRIDGE
,
Observer Review
‘The plot twists and turns, inexorably drawing you on to what is a realistic, sadly believable, conclusion. Wilson’s writing is admirable throughout, sure-footed in the dialogue; and in description, clean, clear and at times quite beautiful’
SUSIE MAGUIRE
,
Scotland On Sunday
‘Wilson employs a slightly out-of-focus prose style that eminently suits his tale of intrigue and double-dealing. There is no doubt that he is a promising writer, his novel operating on many levels, to divert and to tease the intellect of his readers. Watch his star, for it is surely in the ascendant’
VINCENT BANVILLE
,
Irish Times
‘
The Company of Strangers
is an even more ambitious novel than
A Small Death in Lisbon
– a complex interplay of brutality, love and treachery…Combining historical novel, thriller and love story, Robert Wilson has created an intelligent, wide-ranging drama that satisfies on each of those levels’
NATASHA COOPER
,
TLS
‘Wilson writes beautifully and is a meticulous observer of his characters. The book is absorbing’
SUSANNA YAGER
,
Sunday Telegraph
‘An entertaining and gripping novel. Wilson has constructed an agreeably complicated story and tells it very well…immensely enjoyable’
ALLAN MASSIE
,
The Scotsman
‘Robert Wilson takes a young romantic heroine who would not be out of place in a Daphne du Maurier novel and drops her into the intrigue of a neutral country in wartime…His tale is a plotter’s delight: spanning several decades and cleverly reworking past narratives in the light of new evidence he creates an intriguing moral maze for his heroine to negotiate – and a puzzle of metaphors to match (he’s a better stylist than du Maurier). Recommended’
CHRIS PETIT
,
Guardian
‘
The Company of Strangers
spans the years from World War Two to glasnost and the collapse of the Berlin Wall, yet for all the inevitable social commentary the novel remains at heart a conventional socio-political thriller with strong echoes of le Carré, Ambler, Deighton and others…an evocative and compelling thriller’
Publishers Weekly
A SMALL DEATH IN LISBON
BLOOD IS DIRT
A DARKENING STAIN
THE BIG KILLING
INSTRUMENTS OF DARKNESS
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
HarperCollins
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This paperback edition 2002
First published in Great Britain in 2001 by HarperCollins
Copyright © Robert Wilson 2001
Robert Wilson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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EPub Edition © APRIL 2010 ISBN: 978-0-007-37966-8
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