Dirty Tricks
Authors: Michael Dibdin
Dirty Tricks
Michael Dibdin
Pocket (1991)
Tags: Thriller, Mystery
Thrillerttt Mysteryttt
A comedy of manners, a mystery thriller, and a sardonic satire whose deliciously unscrupulous narrator claims that everything he did regarding his victims was “market-led,”
Dirty Tricks
is pure entertainment from one of the most inventive writers around.
When the nameless narrator embarks upon an affair with Karen, a seemingly vapid P.E. teacher married to a boring accountant, he does not know her fetish is for adultery while her husband is in the room or loitering nearby. But once he finds out, he doesn’t care. He has been abroad for twenty years, and since his return to merry old England he’s been startlingly uninhibited by morals or a conscience. Which is not only why he eventually gets involved with blackmail, a kidnapping, and two murders, but also how, with hilariously syllogistic logic, he’s able to justify his role in all of it.
From Publishers Weekly
Dibdin's ( The Tryst ) fifth novel is a deliciously mean-spirited satirical tale of murder and betrayal. The unnamed narrator is a 40-year-old teacher of English as a second language, by his own description "damaged goods . . . another over-educated, under-motivated loser." A sort of '60s throwback, he has reluctantly returned from stints abroad to a Thatcherized England, where chance throws him together with a well-to-do but hopelessly vulgar suburban couple. His affair with the wife proves his first step up the social ladder. As he climbs over the bodies around him, the book becomes a pointed, witty send-up of the new Tory brand of self-help, and the protagonist's clumsy ruthlessness a parody of free-market economics. On the final pages the whole thing comes together in a bleak, black joke on the era of neo-conservatism, in England and elsewhere. Dibdin's subtly inflected first-person narration is a marvel of controlled tone, with the narrator's snide, snobbish facade gradually dissolving into self-disgust until he marshals his emotional forces in the climax. A wickedly funny tour de force.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Dibdin's fifth novel (The Tryst, 1990, etc.) combines sex and violence in hilarious and appalling ways as narrator Tim--a poor but well-educated language-school instructor--jockeys for position among the academics and the
right sort'' at Oxford. Tim's affair with Karen begins at a dinner party--in the kitchen, while her husband Denny is pontificating at the dining-room table. As their lusty bouts heat up, the notion of dispatching Denny pops up--and soon he's done away with on a drunken sail. In due course, Tim and Karen marry, and Tim settles in to enjoy Denny's house, wife, and wealth. Then, however, Karen accepts Clive (Tim's archenemy) as her new lover, leaving Tim to moon over near-perfect Oxford woman Alison and to arrange a mishap for Karen, with Clive as the scapegoat. Will Tim get away with it? Almost, but his misreading of Alison's devotion leads to a comeuppance--of sorts. A jaunty, cynical sendup of the British class system,
perfect'' marriages, and expediency as a personal leitmotif. A comedy about immorality that'll make you cringe. --
Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Dirty Tricks
Michael Dibdin
Pocket (1991)
Tags: Mystery, Thriller
Mysteryttt Thrillerttt
A comedy of manners, a mystery thriller, and a sardonic satire whose deliciously unscrupulous narrator claims that everything he did regarding his victims was “market-led,”
Dirty Tricks
is pure entertainment from one of the most inventive writers around.
When the nameless narrator embarks upon an affair with Karen, a seemingly vapid P.E. teacher married to a boring accountant, he does not know her fetish is for adultery while her husband is in the room or loitering nearby. But once he finds out, he doesn’t care. He has been abroad for twenty years, and since his return to merry old England he’s been startlingly uninhibited by morals or a conscience. Which is not only why he eventually gets involved with blackmail, a kidnapping, and two murders, but also how, with hilariously syllogistic logic, he’s able to justify his role in all of it.
From Publishers Weekly
Dibdin's ( The Tryst ) fifth novel is a deliciously mean-spirited satirical tale of murder and betrayal. The unnamed narrator is a 40-year-old teacher of English as a second language, by his own description "damaged goods . . . another over-educated, under-motivated loser." A sort of '60s throwback, he has reluctantly returned from stints abroad to a Thatcherized England, where chance throws him together with a well-to-do but hopelessly vulgar suburban couple. His affair with the wife proves his first step up the social ladder. As he climbs over the bodies around him, the book becomes a pointed, witty send-up of the new Tory brand of self-help, and the protagonist's clumsy ruthlessness a parody of free-market economics. On the final pages the whole thing comes together in a bleak, black joke on the era of neo-conservatism, in England and elsewhere. Dibdin's subtly inflected first-person narration is a marvel of controlled tone, with the narrator's snide, snobbish facade gradually dissolving into self-disgust until he marshals his emotional forces in the climax. A wickedly funny tour de force.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Dibdin's fifth novel (The Tryst, 1990, etc.) combines sex and violence in hilarious and appalling ways as narrator Tim--a poor but well-educated language-school instructor--jockeys for position among the academics and the
right sort'' at Oxford. Tim's affair with Karen begins at a dinner party--in the kitchen, while her husband Denny is pontificating at the dining-room table. As their lusty bouts heat up, the notion of dispatching Denny pops up--and soon he's done away with on a drunken sail. In due course, Tim and Karen marry, and Tim settles in to enjoy Denny's house, wife, and wealth. Then, however, Karen accepts Clive (Tim's archenemy) as her new lover, leaving Tim to moon over near-perfect Oxford woman Alison and to arrange a mishap for Karen, with Clive as the scapegoat. Will Tim get away with it? Almost, but his misreading of Alison's devotion leads to a comeuppance--of sorts. A jaunty, cynical sendup of the British class system,
perfect'' marriages, and expediency as a personal leitmotif. A comedy about immorality that'll make you cringe. --
Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
MICHAEL DIBDIN
Dirty Tricks
Michael Dibdin is the author of many novels, including the Aurelio Zen mysteries
And Then You Die, Dead Lagoon
, and
Ratking
, which won the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award, and
The Last Sherlock Holmes Story
. He lives in Seattle, Washington.
Books by
MICHAEL DIBDIN
And Then You Die
Thanksgiving
Blood Rain
A Long Finish
Così Fan Tutti
Dark Specter
Dead Lagoon
The Dying of the Light
Cabal
Vendetta
Dirty Tricks
The Tryst
Ratking
A Rich Full Death
The Last Sherlock Holmes Story
FIRST VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD EDITION, JULY 2003
Copyright © 1991 by Michael Dibdin
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in
Great Britain by Faber & Faber Ltd., London. First published
in hardcover in the United States by Summit Books, a division of
Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, in 1991.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dibdin, Michael.
Dirty tricks / Michael Dibdin.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-82245-1
1. English teachers—Fiction. 2. Oxford (England)—Fiction.
3. Social classes—Fiction. 4. Adultery—Fiction. 5. Murder—Fiction.
6. Black humor (Literature) gsafd I. Title.
PR6054.I26 D57 2003
823’.914—dc21 2002034345
Author photograph © Isolde Ohlbaum
v3.1
For Syb,
sine qua non
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28