Audacious Perversion (Bloodlines) (Bloodlines S.) [Paperback]

Mark Sanderson (Author)

Book Description

Series: Bloodlines S. | Publication Date: March 22, 1999

Sanderson infuses the slasher crime novel with British class warfare in this dry tragicomedy about a 28-year-old crossword-puzzle-obsessed London magazine writer.""--Publishers Weekly. Martin Rudrum, a good looking, young media-mover and crossword puzzle fanatic, has a massive chip on his shoulder. His glamorous friends all appear to be higher up the social scale and seem to enjoy looking down their noses at the street-wise writer. One day Martin decides to do something about it. Thus begins a series of murders in which the accessories of pleasure-champagne, drugs, dumbbells, sunbeds-are misused to deadly effect and through which the medium very definitely becomes the message. Audacious Perversion is a fast moving, outrageous, and witty thriller, a celebration of the serial killer genre while at the same time a satire of it.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

English journalist Sanderson infuses the slasher crime novel with British class warfare in this dry tragicomedy about a 28-year-old crossword-puzzle-obsessed London magazine writer whose misanthropy barely overtakes his self-hatred. Just as the backward spelling of Martin Redrum's last name tips off the reader, the acrostic of his disastrous dinner party's guest list?Michael, Alex, Rory, Trudi, Isobel, and Nicola?is enough to set him off on a methodical murder spree. These "friends," whom he considers undeservedly richer or more successful than himself, start meeting their demises in occasionally creative and appropriate ways, such as death by tanning bed, exercise weights and cocaine. Sanderson goes over the ground broken long ago by Martin Amis and Bret Easton Ellis (while fans of Stephen King's The Shining will recognize the Redrum ploy) as he reconstructs a now-tiresome landscape filled with yuppie hedonists, narcissists and wastrels, all warranting death in Martin's jaded opinion. Any satire or wit is subsumed in the planning of Martin's next killing, the arrangement of another alibi or the release of another red herring. Part of the publisher's Bloodlines crime series, this novel is ultimately undermined by a protagonist insufficiently sympathetic to win readers' hearts and inadequately villainous to gain their hisses.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

If dirty looks or rapier wit could kill, most of us would be long dead, or at least severely wounded. After another dull dinner party with six of his successful media friends, Martin Rundrum decides on a whim to adopt more efficient weapons and do in his companions one by one. Included in his arsenal are superglue, a microwave oven, a sunbed, and, in a moment when creativity fails him, a shotgun. He approaches each murder with all the detached calculation he applies to filling in his beloved crossword puzzles. Any similarity between this darkly humorous novel and those of Brett Easton Ellis is probably intentional. Sanderson is a London journalist and obviously relishes the opportunity to skewer post-Thatcher London society as much as Ellis enjoys doing the same to Manhattan. Sanderson does, though, put his own spin on things. The murders are all carefully timed so as never to interfere with tea, and Martin is a bisexual always eager to bed whoever might be available. Suitable wherever Ellis's novels are popular.ABob Lunn, Kansas City
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 238 pages
• Publisher: Do Not Pr (March 22, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1899344322
• ISBN-13: 978-1899344321
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 4.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,394,095 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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