"...he had been a shade too set on making a fine figure. It was part and parcel of that immense, secret vanity of his, the vanity which had led him to avoid promotion and wilfully seek obscurity."
With a such a philosophy one can imagine the horror of Wilfred Rimmer as he is charged, condemned and hanged for the murder of his wife. The case becomes a sensation. Years later a true crime writer attempts to shed new light on the facts, but is unable to penetrate Rimmer's character, which remains active beyond the grave in the memories of those few remaining people who knew him. Worse, Rimmer's philosophy is class-based, which brings him into conflict with the pre-conceived bias of the writer. By all accounts a shabby, bespectacled and determined loser, those who knew Rimmer speak of him as a gentleman. But if he was innocent, why won't they speak to absolve him? Well, it was Rimmer's tragedy to marry above his station and everything flows from there...
A complex and infuriating first novel by John Hutton, whose observations of class hypocrisy in England set him apart from the usual run of crime and so-called literary novelists. His two books are unique in the history of post-war British literature. And make no mistake, they are literature. If only the arts knew their business. But that is covered in the novel too. Recommended.
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