Martin Booth, novelist, critic, biographer, children's author and social historian, died of a brain tumor in 2004. Shortly after diagnosis, he began to write his acclaimed memoir of his childhood in Hong Kong, Gweilo which he completed shortly before his death. Amongst his acclaimed novels were Hiroshima Joe, based on the life of a real down-and-out Briton who had survived the Nagasaki atomic raid, The Industry of Souls, which was short-listed for the Booker prize, and A Very Private Gentleman, which has now been filmed as The American, starring George Clooney.

There are echoes of Nabokov in this in this tense and poetic mystery