The Blade Artist (Mark Renton, 4) - Softcover

Welsh, Irvine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0224102168 ISBN 13: 9780224102162

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 2016

Synopsis

Jim Francis has finally found the perfect life – and is now unrecognisable, even to himself. A successful painter and sculptor, he lives quietly with his wife, Melanie, and their two young daughters, in an affluent beach town in California. Some say he’s a fake and a con man, while others see him as a genuine visionary.

But Francis has a very dark past, with another identity and a very different set of values. When he crosses the Atlantic to his native Scotland, for the funeral of a murdered son he barely knew, his old Edinburgh community expects him to take bloody revenge. But as he confronts his previous life, all those friends and enemies – and, most alarmingly, his former self – Francis seems to have other ideas.

When Melanie discovers something gruesome in California, which indicates that her husband’s violent past might also be his psychotic present, things start to go very bad, very quickly.

The Blade Artist is an elegant, electrifying novel – ultra violent but curiously redemptive – and it marks the return of one of modern fiction’s most infamous, terrifying characters, the incendiary Francis Begbie from Trainspotting.

About this title

Review:

"Back to his violent best... Dark, gruesome and captivating." (Esquire)

"It’s a thriller in the mode of Tarantino making war films or westerns; hiding grand themes within genre." (Alan Bett Skinny)

"An ultra-violent odyssey through the darkest recesses of urban life." (Hot Press)

"Intense, electrifying... Welsh has delivered a tremendously entertaining book – a whodunit, a thriller, and a probing character study – that’s obsessed with conflict, both physical and mental... A surprisingly poignant, evocative read – highly recommended." (Mr Hyde)

"This has the makings of ‘peak Welsh’: funny, filthy, literary smack." (Sam Parker Esquire)

Book Description:

The most terrifying character in Trainspotting returns – with his own novel

About this edition

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0224102168
• ISBN 13: 9780224102162
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288