The Killjoy

Nobody has ever treated Professor Ian Laidlaw in a natural way. Presented with his hideous facial scars, everyone falls back on cast-iron, distant courtesy to hide their pity or shock. Then Alicia, a merry student, collapses in fits of laughter in one of his seminars. Never realising she is playing with fire, Alicia is unthinkingly drawn into a relationship which will expose the obsessive, destructive passions that lie beneath this restrained man's primly cordial manner...Praise for The Killjoy'Gripping ... a knock-down triumph' Observer'Anne Fine's art makes us enter the fierce, logical, predatory mind of the intelligent Beast as he corrodes within and exploits his willing victim. A spare and remorseless prose drives forward this case study of obsession, as if the murderer were confessing to a psychiatrist ... More discriminating and convincing than John Fowles's first novel, The Collector ... Haunting' - The Times'A remarkably assured performance ... so powerful, and so well written' The New York Times