Blackground

Joan Aiken

17 May 2018
9781509878734
304 pages

Synopsis

'Blackground deals with guilty secrets, greed, betrayal and murder. Joan Aiken knows her trade.' London Review of Books.

Cat Conwil is an actress on the brink of fame – will love be her saviour of her downfall?

Cat lands a starring role in a TV adaptation of Middlemarch shooting on location at the splendid Knoyle Court. There, she’s pursued by the estate’s owner millionaire James Tybold – they fall for eachother hard and fast, marry and embark on the honeymoon of a lifetime. But only in romantic Venice as they start getting to really know each other do they uncover the shocking truth – that they met before, many years ago . . .

From this moment everything changes – they both have dark histories, complicated families, and one of them has some devastating secrets in their past . . .

Between a film set, a Venetian honeymoon and a section of the Dorset coast remodelled to resemble a Greek fishing village, award winning author Joan Aiken entwines mortal danger with quirky characters in her captivating romantic suspense novel, Blackground.

Aiken’s robust Blackground deals with guilty secrets, greed, betrayal and murder. Written with pace and confidence, it adroitly combines the genres of romance and thriller. Joan Aiken knows her trade, and that mystery and murder are what people want to take on holiday with them . . .
Several unexplained accidents begin to threaten her life, but the reader cottons on before Cat does and enjoys every minute of the denouement . . . Aiken has a fine sense of pacing and a sure ear for dialogue
Published as a crime novel this deftly combines the strengths of several genres from romance to gothic . . . the plot is intriguing and the writing consistently good