The Contract - Tapa blanda

One June day in 1931 the body of a young woman was found on a lonely beach on Long Island, New York. She was bruised and there were some signs that she had been raped. It was thought that she had been murdered. She was soon identified as Starr Faithfull, a nicely brought up girl of good family, but the picture soon began to change. Starr was not what she seemed: she was sexually promiscuous, mentally unstable and, crucially, had been abused as a child by her guardian, a prominent Boston politician. A tabloid sensation in the 1930s, the story of Starr Faithfull is the basis of William Palmer's extraordinary new novel.

William Palmer is the author of five novels, The Good Republic, Leporello, The Contract, The Pardon of Saint Anne and The India House, and a collection of short stories, Four Last Things. He was awarded a Travelling Scholarship by the Society of Authors in 1997. A book of poems, The Island Rescue, won the Collection Prize at the Listowel Writers' Week festival in Ireland in 2006. He reviews regularly for the Independent and other journals. He lives in south-west London.