Confidant

Timothy Spell lives behind the secure doors of a well-kept building in a respectable part of town. His wedding is approaching, and the string of murders committed by a figure the press calls the Cleaver-Murderer seems far removed from his orderly life. Yet something waits beyond his threshold, a fate that begins to take hold of him and reshape the lives of everyone he meets.

This 20th anniversary edition is the first fully revised version of the novel, which has been out of print for fifteen years. The author's preface describes it as a shilling shocker in the spirit of 1970s Italian giallo films, imagined as though co-written by the French novelist André Gide. The book is a thriller that also works as existential noir, tracing how a seemingly secure man is drawn into events he cannot control.

Readers who enjoy crime fiction with a literary edge, and those interested in the blend of pulp suspense and philosophical unease, will find this a distinctive example of the form.