Hunters in the Dark - Tapa dura

"Osborne’s brilliance as a travel writer places his web of deceit, greed and need ... in a world conjured up with dazzling immediacy ... Sumptuous and sinister, languorous and tense, this is a novel that gives Osborne’s remarkable talents haunting scope" (Peter Kemp Sunday Times)

"If the purpose of a novel is to take you away from the everyday and show you something different, then Osborne is succeeding, and handsomely. Hunters in the Dark is a novel of immersion... shaped like a quiet dream. As such, it’s an unqualified success, and I hope it enjoys a wide readership" (Lee Child New York Times)

"Cambodia...comes splendidly to life in Osborne’s prose... This is a tip-top thriller. Osborne knows how to keep the pages turning; he is a name to watch" (Ian Thomson Independent)

"Edgy and gripping ... Written with unfailing precision and beauty, Hunters in the Dark stakes out territory different to the many writers to whom Osborne has been compared." (Neel Mukherjee Guardian)

"Besides being a gripping thriller, it's a fine meditation on luck, fate and chance and a wonderful evocation of Cambodia, a country of ghosts, spirits and shadows" (Sebastian Shakespeare Daily Mail, Books of the Year)

Adrift in Cambodia, Robert Grieve – pushing thirty and eager to side-step a life of quiet desperation as a small-town teacher – decides to go missing. As he crosses the border from Thailand, he tests the threshold of a new future.

And on that first night, a small windfall precipitates a chain of events involving a bag of ‘jinxed’ money, a suave American, a corrupt policeman and a rich doctor’s daughter, in which Robert’s life is changed forever.

Alive with malice and grace, this is a taut tale reminiscent of the nightmares of Patricia Highsmith: a story of double identities, and innocence in the midst of evil, from a master of atmosphere and observation.