A Personal History of Thirst [Hardcover]

John Burdett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1996

A me+a7nage a+a6 trois that unites an ambitious London lawyer, a sexually inventive American woman, and a thief named Thirst culminates in a perverse obsession that ends with a courtroom confrontation. A first novel.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Former lawyer Burdett's first novel cleverly exploits a love triangle to highlight the mordant ironies of the British class system. Couched in terms of psychological intrigue, this three-part thriller uncovers deception involving ambitious James Knight, a defender turned prosecutor; Oliver Thirst, his former client; and Daisy Smith, an Anglomaniac American. In the first part, Daisy is charged with Oliver's murder. The second part is a flashback to the late 1970s, which establishes and develops the dark triangle. James, Oliver and Daisy all seek escape from their respective places in society. James, not being of blue-blood public-school stock, feels an outsider in the legal ranks even as he rises to the verge of receiving silks as a Queen's Counsel. That's when Oliver, trying to polish his native intelligence with schooling in order to escape the streets, reenters his life. Though it's unethical to continue contact with a former client, not to mention socially inadvisable to step down the class ladder for tea, James does so because of a secret in his own past. Meanwhile, Daisy is trying to erase the memory of a brutally abusive father while her British mother moves towards a devastating end. A convoluted strategem fabricated to free Daisy hides several sinister truths as the final battle of wits ensues in Daisy's trial, which consumes much of the third and most compelling-and funny-part of the novel. As legal machinations and revelations of cunning duplicity mount, Burdett drives his sharp-eyed amorality tale to its startling conclusion.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

James Knight, successful London barrister, is visited by two policemen investigating the murder of Oliver Thirst, a convicted criminal whom Kinght once defended and later befriended. Daisy, Knight's ex-lover and Thirst's wife, is accused of the crime. What follows is Knight's narration of the connection between these three. Knight first meets Daisy, an American, when both are in school. His working-class origins are one of the things that attract Daisy, but Knight is determined to climb the social ladder and, as he puts it, "amputate his past." As he is starting to establish himself in his career, he is asked to handle an appeal for Thirst, a thief with whom he has a slight acquaintance, so that Thirst can be paroled from prison and make a new start. The theme of starting anew, making oneself over, changing identities, is central to the book. The appeal is successful, and from that point on the lives of Knight, Thirst, and Daisy are fatally intertwined. The characterizations are not quite strong enough to make this first novel a complete success. The reader never quite buys Daisy's alleged charm and Thirst's charisma. Still, the author does a skillful job of managing his theme of shifting identities, all the way to the surprising but inevitable conclusion. Mary Ellen Quinn

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 301 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow & Co; 1st edition (February 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688143997
• ISBN-13: 978-0688143992
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #281,358 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Burdett is the author of A Personal History of Thirst, The Last Six Million Seconds, Bangkok 8, and Bangkok Tattoo.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gritty and passionate debut, July 24, 2004

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Personal History of Thirst (Hardcover)

The core of British author Burdett's first novel is obsession - with love, class and ambition. The story takes place around the events leading to the murder of Oliver Thirst, a charismatic, brutal and intelligent criminal.

James Knight, the narrator, is a bitter, lonely and highly successful barrister about to 'take silk,' or become a Queen's Counsel, at the time Thirst is murdered. He is suspected of the murder, having lost the love of his life, Daisy Smith, to Thirst. But what at first seems straightforward quickly develops kinks.

The cold, austere middle-class Knight reunites with Daisy (the other suspect in Thirst's murder) 'overjoyed that one man had died and I was a fool again.' While savoring a present Knight knows may be brief, he explores the past.

He and Daisy first meet as university students. Rather than the stiff-necked prig he appears, Knight is a former street-kid, an orphan from the slums fighting his way out. An American from the affluent middle class, Daisy is wild, fun-loving and sexually uninhibitted, with no comprehension of class rigidity in Britain. She stirs Knight to risk-taking bravado and - in the opposite direction - inspires him to strive even harder for material success in his rule-bound profession.

Thirst is a thief, one of Knight's first criminal clients. While grateful for his freedom, Thirst becomes obsessed with the lawyer, envying him his escape from the slums, despising his middle-class dullness. But, seeing only a bleak future of poverty and jail, he seeks Knight's help in rehabilitating himself.

Daisy, who's never met anyone like Thirst, is dazzled. He's clever, dangerous, physical and unpredictable where Knight is cautious, cerebral and dogged. Thirst, like a savage version of Knight, reins himself in only to burst out in reckless action. He also shows not the slightest interest in Daisy. ' 'I should have sat there and took it,' Thirst said as she slammed the door. He was as oblivious to Daisy's anger as he was to her. Her exit might have been a puff of air.'

Burdett depicts a strange world of people who 'help' Thirst, their altruistic veneer quickly stripped (by Thirst) to self-absorbed venal cravings. And when Thirst's efforts at the straight life fail, bitterness supplants ambition.

Meanwhile, as appearances grow ever more essential to the driven Knight, Daisy becomes more hedonistic and demanding until, just as the reader wonders why they tolerate each other, sparks ignite a moment of real passion.

Seen through his narrator's eyes, Burdett's London is claustrophobic, its people eyeing one another enviously from self-constructed boxes. His prose is taut, rich with scarcely alluded meaning, seething with stilted emotions. And when the explosion comes that drives the triangle apart, it seems, not anticlimactic, but pointlessly self-destructive. Circumstances supply the catalyst but injured pride makes it stick.

This is a highly accomplished and complex first novel, rife with human frailty, irony and mixed motivations. It succeeds in portraying characters who are as repugnant as they are passionate, yet keeps the reader interested in what happens to them right up to the last page.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I can't believe that I'm only the 2nd one to review Burdett's debut novel, May 20, 2010

By 

Neal C. Reynolds (Indianapolis, Indiana) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Personal History of Thirst (Hardcover)

This is just too good a book to have attracted so little interest so far.Okay, it doesn't work as a whodunnit. If you flip a coin to decide which of the two most likely suspects are the murderer, there's a 50% chance of your being right. But that's totally unimportant. I won't recount the plot since the other reviewer has done a splendid job of that. I'll just comment that this does get you immersed in the infernal triangle involving the victim and the two suspects. The crux of the story lies in the three cornered relationship and in the portrayal of the three characters involved. Really, there are no good guys (or gal) and no bad guys (or gal) here. The story is of three human beings with individual personalities and codes of ethics. And as a first novel, this book establishes the author as a master of his crafy who has continued to give us some splendid novels.