It's late spring of 1990 and a love affair is flourishing: between Ivor Tesham, a thirty-three year old rising star of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, and Hebe Furnal, a stunning North London housewife stuck in a dull marriage. What excitement Hebe lacks at home, however, is amply compensated for by the well-bred and intensely attractive Tesham - an ardent womanizer and ambitious politican. On the eve of her twenty-eighth birthday, Tesham decides to give Hebe a present to remember: something far more memorable than, say, the costly string of pearls he's already lavished upon her.Involving a fashionable new practice known as 'adventure sex', a man arranges for his unsuspecting but otherwise willing girlfriend to be snatched from the street, bound and gagged, and delivered to him at a mutually agreed venue ...Set amidst an age of IRA bombings, the first Gulf War, and sleazy politics, "The Birthday Present" is the gripping story of a fall from grace, and of a man who carries within him all the hypocrisy, greed and self-obsession of a troubled era.
| ISBN | 0141036214 | | Pages | 288 | | ISBN13 | 9780141036212
(What's this?) | | Weight (grammes) | 194 | | Publisher | Penguin Books Ltd | | Published in | London | | Imprint | Penguin Books Ltd | | Height (mm) | 198 | | Format | Paperback | | Width (mm) | 129 | | Publication date | 02 Apr 2009 | | Spine width (mm) | 18 | | DEWEY | 823.914 | | Academic level | General | | DEWEY edition | DC22 | |
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The Rendell/Vine partnership has for years been producing consistently better work than most Booker winners put together Ian Rankin Barbara Vine is Ruth Rendell letting rip Daily Telegraph A superb and original writer Amanda Craig, Express
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