Brother Death - John Lodwick

"Brother Death is perhaps John Lodwick's most original and ambitious thriller, combining the moral questioning of Graham Greene with the edge-of-your-seat suspense of Geoffrey Household or Hitchcock." - Michael Moorcock

"Mr. Lodwick writes with great accomplishment, softening his brutalities with a sardonic humour." - Lionel Hale, Observer

"Mr. Lodwick is a clever writer who goes all out to be tough. It should gratify him to hear that this reviewer thinks Brother Death a perfectly horrid book, for he can hardly have meant it to be anything else.... there is no denying that Mr. Lodwick's style is admirable, that he can make a point with the minimum of words and can be very good company." - Guardian

"[O]ne of the wittiest and most original talents of his generation." - Peter Green, Telegraph

"Mr. Lodwick is one of the few true craftsmen writing in English." - The Observer

"John Lodwick has a richness of invention and a command of words equal to Evelyn Waugh." - Daily Herald

Eric Rumbold is a mercenary adventurer, adrift in the back streets of Marseilles, where he makes a precarious living as a counterfeiter and black marketeer. Totally lacking either principles or moral scruples, Rumbold had been a top spy, saboteur, and killer for the British during the war but finds his talents of little use in peacetime. When the alluring Fiona Lampeter meets Rumbold, she knows she's found the man she's been looking for. Her young son stands in the way of her inheriting the family fortune: she wants the boy dead and is willing to make the job well worth Rumbold's while. Drawn into the Lampeter family's web of intrigue and deceit, Rumbold lays the plans for the horrific and cold-blooded murder of an innocent child ... and in the novel's unforgettable climax, at least one of them will make the acquaintance of Brother Death.

One of the best selling authors of his day, John Lodwick's novels were characterized by their fast pace, sardonic humour, and brilliant prose. Admired by Somerset Maugham, John Betjeman, and Anthony Burgess, and often compared with Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh, Lodwick fell into obscurity after his death in a car crash in 1959 at age 43. This edition of Brother Death (1948) is the first republication of any of his works since his death and includes a new introduction by Chris Petit.