Painting Death - Tapa dura

"Sharp, funny and satirical... This is one to relish" (Guardian)

"Neatly written, full of calamitous moments in which the comedy is suddenly elbowed aside by genuine emotion" (D J Taylor Spectator)

"Hovering adroitly between tragedy and farce...a good novel to savour by the pool in Tuscany this summer" (Angus Clarke The Times)

"Duckworth is a worthy heir to a tradition of seductive, cultured literary monsters that includes Humbert Humbert, Hannibal Lecter and John Lanchester's Tarquin Winot" (John Dugdale Sunday Times)

"mordant thriller" (three stars Telegraph)

Morris Duckworth has a dark past. Having married and murdered his way into a wealthy Italian family he has long left aside the paperweight and the pillow to become a respected member of Veronese business life. But it’s not enough.

Never satisfied with being anything short of the best, he comes up with a plan to put on the most exciting art exhibition of the decade, based on a subject close to his heart: killing. All the great slaughters of scripture and classical times will be on show, from Cain and Abel, to Brutus and Caesar. But as Morris meet stiff resistance from the Neapolitan director of Verona’s Castelvecchio museum, everything starts to unravel around him. His children are rebelling, his mistress is asking for more than he wants to give, his wife is increasingly attached to her ageing confessor, and worst of all it’s getting harder and harder to ignore the ghosts that swirl around him, and the skeletons rattling in every cupboard. The shame of it is that Morris Arthur Duckworth really did not want to have to kill again.