Soft - Hardcover

Thomson, Rupert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747536708 ISBN 13: 9780747536703

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 1998

Synopsis

American sales supremo, Raleigh Connor, is masterminding the launch of Kwench!, a life-enhancing drink. Barker Dodds is hounded out of Plymouth by a family who suspect him of murder. And Glade Spencer works as a waitress in a Soho restaurant. What does she have in common with Connor and Dodds?

About this title

Review

At first glance, the thrillers of Rupert Thomson seem to have nothing in common except the expansiveness of his imagination and the lucid radiance of his writing. Air & Fire is about a group of French people sent to California at the end of the 19th century to build a church. The Insult is about a man blinded by a robber in a supermarket parking lot who discovers one night that--because of a bizarre experiment--he can see again. Thomson's latest finds three very different characters--an aimless waitress, a reluctant hit man, and an ambitious young marketing executive--linked by the sudden success of a new soft drink. But a closer look confirms the feeling that Soft continues the author's fascination with the way science can bend and shape the destinies of all sorts of nonscientific people. Certainly Glade Spencer, the flaky young woman who flies off periodically for unpleasant encounters with her American lawyer boyfriend, has no idea when she signs up for a sleep clinic to earn some extra cash that the soda slogans planted in her brain could cause her death. Barker Dodds, the nightclub bouncer from Plymouth, doesn't know why he's being paid to kill Glade. And James Lyle, the striving marketer who thought up the brainwashing scheme in the first place, is deliberately out of the loop about its consequences. All three are so perfectly drawn that you'd recognize them on the street, and the way Thomson describes their quirky, weirdly decorated flats and lifestyles captures the flickering pulse of London with uncanny accuracy. --Dick Adler

Review

"A tight, hypnotic story. Imagine Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard teaming up. Imagine Quentin Tarantino and Martin Amis collaborating."- Michiko Kakutani, "The New York Times""A stone-cold blast, the kind of twisted thriller that will keep you turning the pages until four in the morning."- "Details""An intense and compulsive thriller. Thomson is a linguistic acrobat... a master of mood and character."-"The Times", London

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0747536708
• ISBN 13: 9780747536703
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256