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The Birthday Present

The Birthday Present

by Ruth Rendell, Richard Bravery

MysteryScandalsPolitical corruptionFictionPoliticians
4.0
Open Library
Open Library

About this book

Ivor Tesham is a handsome, single, young member of Parliament whose political star is on the rise. When he meets a woman in a chance encounter--a beautiful, leggy, married woman named Hebe--the two become lovers obsessed with their trysts, spiced up by what the newspapers like to call "adventure sex." It's the dress-up and role-play that inspire Ivor to create a surprise birthday present for his beloved that involves a curbside kidnapping. It's all intended as mock-dangerous foreplay, but then things take a dark turn. After things go horribly wrong, Ivor begins to receive anonymous letters that reveal astonishingly specic details about the affair and its aftermath. Somehow he must keep his role from being uncovered--and his political future from being destroyed by scandal. Like a heretic on the inquisitor's rack, Ivor is not to be spared the exquisitely slow and tortuous unfolding of events, as hints, nuances, and small revelations lay his darkest secrets hideously bare for all the world to see. The Birthday Present is a deft, insightful, and compulsively readable exploration of obsessive desire--and the dark twists of fate that can shake the lives of even those most insulated by privilege, sophistication, and power.

Themes & subjects

MysteryScandalsPolitical corruptionFictionPoliticiansAdultery

Setting

Great Britain

About the author

Ruth Rendell
Ruth Rendell

17 February 1930 – 2 May 2015

Ruth Barbara Rendell is an English crime author (<a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Rendell>Wikipedia</a>).

Authors

Ruth Rendell, Richard Bravery

Pages

288

Read time

≈ 7h

Editions

14

Languages

English, Dutch, French

Publisher

Shaye Areheart Books

ISBN

9789022994788

Where to buy

TR
Amazon Bookshop

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The Birthday Present

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