Kill Your Darlings

In a dishevelled west London flat the body of a young man lies crumpled, the victim of a suicide. In a stylish family home less than a mile away is a writer: stranded in mid-life, his one triumph behind him, his family slipping away from him, all he has to hold on to is his self-belief that one day the world will recognise his talents. From these two seemingly unrelated elements, Terence Blacker creates a magnificently compulsive novel of ego, envy, self-deception and, ultimately, self-destruction. Gregory Keays is a man with a wonderful future behind him. A dazzlingly brilliant first work has led to a series of false starts, wrong turnings and critical cold shoulders. Reduced to compiling a book of literary lists and stuck in the mire of his latest fiction, Insignificance, Gregory's life turns around when he takes under his wing Peter Gibson, a promising student at the night school where he teaches creative writing. When Gibson kills himself following an argument with his mentor, Gregory pays him the highest compliment - he appropriates his work and passes it off as his own...But when Gregory realises that somebody else may know of the existence of the work, he has to decide just how far he is prepared to go for success. And when he calls in Brian McWilliam, ex-villain turned literary star for a spot of freelance work in his old game, it can only lead to one frightening conclusion. A towering literary achievement and a novel of compulsive readability, Kill Your Darlings vividly imagines the terrifying outcome of one man's Faustian pact with the demon of success.