The Last Best Friend
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Classic thriller fiction written in the Golden Age of Murder
"Sims takes the reader on a journey to a long-gone world where entire streets of London were devoted to the trade of rare books—items valuable enough to attract the most nefarious of mobsters." —Publishers Weekly
"The small man standing on the narrow ledge stared fixedly forward with eyes made wide and blank by terror."
At 2pm on a Monday in 1966, Ned Balfour wakes in Corsica beside a beautiful woman.
In the same instant, back in London, fellow art dealer and Dachau survivor Sam Weiss falls ten stories to his death.
Ned refuses to believe that Sam's death was intentional, and his investigation thrusts him into the deceit and fraudulence of the art world, where he unmasks more than one respectable face.
First published in 1967, this thrilling tale of vertigo, suspicion and infidelity is a long-forgotten classic with an intriguing plot twist.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
First published in 1967, this entry in the British Library Classic Thrillers series does a splendid job of evoking London in the mid-'60s, both swinging and decidedly criminal. When art dealer Ned Balfour's Corsican holiday is interrupted by a telegram informing him of the apparent suicide of his friend, fellow art dealer Sam Weiss, he returns home to London. Ned is convinced that Sam, a Dachau survivor, couldn't possibly have jumped voluntarily off a tall building. A part-time writer and full-time collector of rare books, Sims (1923 1999) takes the reader on a journey to a long-gone world where entire streets of London were devoted to the trade of rare books items valuable enough to attract the most nefarious of mobsters. Sims captures the mood of these places with an insider's knowledge, while keeping the brief novel moving with a plot that travels all over London, a city at both the end and beginning of an era.
