Frédéric Dard – författare

From the moment he first gazes at Marjory across the roulette table in the Côte d'Azur Jean-Marie is entranced, and when their feverish holiday romance comes to an end he decides to take the biggest gamble of his life - to follow the beautiful Englishwoman back to rainy Edinburgh.But no sooner has Jean-Marie arrived than his luck runs out. He is drawn into an impenetrable mystery and soon, with blood on his hands, trapped in the grey-granite labyrinth of the city, he is running out of time to save his sanity and his life. The King of Fools is a fiendish tale of passion, betrayal and murder.

It felt like the slipknot on a rope round my chest was being tightened without pityTrouble is the last thing Albert needs. Travelling back to his childhood home on Christmas Eve to mourn his mother's death, he finds the loneliness and nostalgia of his Parisian quartier unbearable... Until, that evening, he encounters a beautiful, seemingly innocent woman at a brasserie, and his spirits are lifted.Still, something about the woman disturbs him. Where is the father of her child? And what are those two red stains on her sleeve? When she invites him back to her apartment, Albert thinks he's in luck. But a monstrous scene awaits them, and he finds himself lured into the darkness against his better judgment.Unravelling like a paranoid nightmare, Bird in a Cage melds existentialist drama with thrilling noir to tell the story of a man trapped in a prison of his own making.

Winner of the 1957 Grand prix de la littérature policière

It was fate that led her to step out in front of the car. A quiet mountain road. A crushed violin. And a beautiful woman lying motionless in the ditch.

Carrying her back to his lodging on a beach near Barcelona, Daniel discovers that the woman is still alive but that she remembers nothing - not even her own name. And soon he has fallen for her mysterious allure. She is a blank canvas, a perfect muse, and his alone. But when Daniel travels to France in search of her past, he slips into a tangled vortex of lies, depravity and murder. The Executioner Weeps is a macabre thriller about the dangerous pitfalls of love.

'The French master of noir' Observer

'Unsettling... worthy of Agatha Christie at her devious best... classic French noir' Guardian

'Hugely atmospheric' The Times

'Spellbinding' Wall Street Journal

'Disturbing from the outset with strong echoes of Simenon' Sunday Times

Frédéric Dard (1921-2000) was one of the best known and loved French crime writers of the twentieth century. Enormously prolific, he wrote more than three hundred thrillers, suspense stories, plays and screenplays, under a variety of noms de plume, throughout his long and illustrious career, which also saw him win the 1957 Grand prix de la littérature policière for The Executioner Weeps. Dard's Bird in a Cage, The Wicked Go to Hell, Crush, The Gravediggers' Bread and The King of Fools are also available or forthcoming from Pushkin Vertigo.