Virtue in Danger

Reggie Oliver

Choose another edition:
Edition*

Out of print

Details

Status Out of print
Release Date 2019
Limitation 24 copies
Size 18 × 26 cm
Pages 285
Weight 1022 g
ISBN 978-3-945795-99-6
Edition lettered edition
Workmanship Each of these thread-stiched lettered exemplars bears a unique hand-illustration by Reggie Oliver. Bound in golden crushed silk, housed in a slipcase, covered in red-plush.

Content

It is July 1963.
At its headquarters, a former luxury hotel in the Swiss Alps, crisis is facing the Moral Regeneration Movement, a powerful modern, quasi-religious cult. Its founder and leader, Arnold Breitman is dying. Questions are already being asked about who is to succeed him.

There are a number of likely candidates. They include a former tennis champion, a Swiss industrialist, a trade unionist and a doctor. But each of them hides a guilty secret. Into this troubled situation comes a world-weary professional actor, Ivor Smith who, quite by accident, finds himself at the very epicentre of the crisis, playing an unexpectedly influential role.

Terrible secrets are revealed, uncontrollable passions are unleashed. The pace is furious. Comedy is rarely absent, but underneath runs a serious subtext. Questions about the nature of morality and the motivations of those who set themselves up as moral leaders are asked. All these elements are bound together into a terrific climax on a mountain top, followed by a joyous ending that might be described as "fairy tale" if it were not laced with mordant wit.

"That is indeed a creatively conceived book."

— Thomas Ligotti

"A novel that will become a classic, I predict."

— Des Lewis

About Reggie Oliver

Reggie Oliver is a man of many talents. He has worked as an actor, a director and a playwright; he adapted Feydeau's plays for the British stage and wrote the biography of Stella Gibbons. His three novels and more than a hundred short stories and novellas in the fantastic genre, published in eight collections by Tartarus, are held in highest esteem by critics, readers and colleagues alike. This is also true of the richly illustrated The Hauntings at Tankerton Park, an utterly original children's book published by Zagava. His story “The Silver Cord” won the Arthur Machen short story prize …

Read more