Books by Hugh Fleetwood

'Black comedy at its most lurid, refined, and raffish... Wilbur George has made court-jester parasitism into an art form: four creepy but wealthy fellow expatriates (who hate each other) contribute to the upkeep of his Roman villa and matchless dinner parties. And when ancient, horrid Pam decides to stop contributing, she dies - moments after taking tea with Wilbur... the three surviving patrons congratulate him on a good clean kill, praise which vain Wilbur can't quite bring himself to deny...' Kirkus Reviews'It is Hugh Fleetwood's great ability as a novelist to analyse the world of the rich, to test it with violence and to subtly probe its corruption.' Peter Ackroyd, Spectator'Artistically successful and enthralling... It shimmers for a long time in the memory's eye.' Glasgow Herald'Extremely readable and suitably chilling.' Jeremy Lewis, Times

Wealthy, depraved and hugely gifted, Luigi Teramo likes to think of himself as a cross between a pagan fertility god and an evil wizard.Luigi has deliberately rejected his youthful talent for art in favour of making money, and of spending his fortune on young men and drugs. But he cannot bring himself to destroy the fruits of that rejected talent - his early paintings. And as the years pass, it starts to seem that those paintings possess a terrible power. A power that will cause Luigi's life to spin out of control, will destroy almost all who get close to him, and will end by involving him in blackmail, and murder. The Dark Paintings is both a thriller and a black comedy - entertaining, shocking and profoundly disturbing.'A tinge of the supernatural, a titillating whiff of the perverse, and - topping it off - a compellingmiasma of creepiness' - Books To Watch Out For

The Man Who Went Down with His Ship (1988) finds Hugh Fleetwood moving from Manhattan and Paris to winter-bound London, from Tuscany and Sardinia to Mexico and Egypt. Yet wherever his characters roam, their fate awaits them like the proverbial appointment in Samarra. In the title story, poet Alfred Albers attempts to confront with honesty an event from his past that has always haunted him, only to learn anew that no good deed goes unpunished. In 'The Nature of Angels' Maria longs for deliverance from a life made moribund, but is finally forced to ponder exactly what kind of power would answer our prayersThis edition includes two later Fleetwood stories: 'L & I' and 'Why Are You Wearing My Daughter's Earrings?''[Fleetwood] reaches down and stirs with venomous delight the nameless, faceless things swimming far below the level of consciousness.' Scotsman

In this 1980 collection Hugh Fleetwood links four tales by a red thread of theme. Author Tina Courtland, having retired to the Italian countryside, is lured back to London to write the life of the only man she has ever admired. Andrew Stairs, who has spent his life refusing to set foot on foreign soil, is tempted by romance to try the risky unknown of 'abroad.' Walter Drake, a novelist cursed by a sense of the failure of his life's work, resolves bitterly to write his autobiography. And Fran Niebauer, a well-heeled patron of writers, is forced to reconsider her motives for this patronage.'Fleetwood can write like a dream... and really get into your head. He reaches down and stirs with venomous delight the nameless, faceless things swimming far below the level of consciousness.' Scotsman

Mrs Vidozza elects to suffer for her gifted, unhinged son; Charles is consumed by the habit of voyeurism; Antonietta succumbs to fascination with a murder she believes she has witnessed; sexuagenarian Daisy suborns herself for the sake of a young girl she imagines as a flower in an otherwise filthy world...In this 1978 collection Hugh Fleetwood gives a name to a theme running through his fictional oeuvreand the fates of his characters: that 'innocence' must as soon as possible be supplanted by awareness of the human capacity for horror, so that Beauty and the Beast are reconciled in our consciousness.'Fleetwood can write like a dream... and really get into your head. He reaches down and stirs with venomous delight the nameless, faceless things swimming far below the level of consciousness.' Scotsman

Lieutenant Fred O'Connor of the NYPD Narcotics Bureau has a secret: an apartment on Central Park West, jointly purchased with ill-gotten gains by Fred and a corrupt fellow officer. The place is a refuge for Fred from a society he finds repellently ill-ordered. But his own equilibrium is disturbed, first by a series of brutal murders of his colleagues, then by the appearance at the apartment's door of wan Leo Smith, who claims to be the cop-killer...'Fleetwood is a compulsive pattern-maker, and a master of the ambiguous thread which finally pulls all together. It is a rich, gruesome, irresistibly readable book.' Times'Fleetwood can write like a dream... and really get into your head. He reaches down and stirs with venomous delight the nameless, faceless things swimming far below the level of consciousness.' Scotsman

In an isolated Roman villa, widowed English dancer Barbara Michaels serves as paid companion and tutor to twenty year-old Catherine, whose rich American mother thinks her 'mad.' In Barbara's eyes it's simply the case that Catherine is not 'all there', and dwells too much in the dysfunctional part of her own head. Barbara's sense of what is and is not 'normal', however, is about to be overturned.First published in 1973, The Girl Who Passed for Normal was Hugh Fleetwood's second novel and the winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for its year. 'Guaranteed to keep you on the edge of your chair.' New York Times'Shocking... Horridly memorable.' San Francisco Chronicle