Inpress Newsletter
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Audio File
John Baker interviewed by Sarah Walters of the Yorkshire Post
Synopsis
“One of Britain’s most talented contemporary crime writers.” — The Times In 1972, 18-year-old Frederick Boyle arrives by ship in the heat and dust of Montevideo, Uruguay. Equipped with only a phrase book, a few pesos and two volumes of philosophy, he immediately changes his name to Ramon Bolio. Uruguay is a country on the brink of dictatorship and as Ramon makes new friends and marvels at the beautiful girls, the world around him is changing rapidly. Then one night he encounters the music and dance of the tango and begins the long process of becoming a Milonguero or master. Looking back on this time many years later, Ramon finds himself at the heart of the suspicious disappearance of a teenage girl. He reflects on the threads that link the past to the present, of the mistakes and decisions made that shape a life into what it is. Winged with Death is a novel about time and tango and revolution, abduction and denial. Author of the acclaimed Sam Turner crime series “Quite simply, a wonderful writer.” — Julia Wallis-Martin, novelist “John Baker writes books that do more than just fill a few pleasant hours: they have depth and substance. His novels are about what it means to be human, the mistakes we make, the nature of good and evil, and the often blurred line between the two.” - Margaret Murphy, Crime Time Read more reviews at John Baker's Blog: http://johnbakersblog.co.uk/press-reviews-of-my-novels/reviews-winged-with-death/
This book is something altogether different. Winged with Death is an absolutely fantastic book. Elsewhere it has been called a literary crime novel but I would say it is only that in the sense that ‘Crime and Punishment’ is a literary crime novel. It is just a novel…a very, very good novel. Though it is 291 pages it is a HUGE book in many ambitious ways that you will only understand if you read it… so I advise reading it, when you get a chance. It is one of the best new novels I’ve read in a while and you can take that with no hype, no nonsense and no sales pitch.
Rachel Fox
This is a gripping novel, for me in more ways than one. While both stories in themselves are gripping, I found the structure and its implications, gripping: the idea that stories vie with each other for significance and as the repositories of reality or truth. Winged with Death is fascinating, and very exciting.
Elizabeth Baines
I think Winged with Death is an achingly good book. At times simply beautiful. The descriptions and ruminations on the passage of time chocked me with emotion. There’s a sense of depth there, a real sense of deep and leviathan-like mystery – but not the mystery of the crime novel; more the true dictionary definition, of vast questions, relating to who we are, and what we are, and all those other things we hurt our heads and strain our hearts with.
Mark Patrick Lynch
Winged with Death is an intensely readable and very rewarding piece of work from a polished writer with a worldview that I find fascinating.
Martin Edwards
... a literary crime novel that links the armed radicalism of the 1970s with a protagonist’s complex situation in the present, to disturbing effect. In Baker’s novel, the past is Montevideo, where urban guerillas confront a grim military dictatorship. The present is the disappearance of a teenage girl in York. The prose is colourful and precise, sometimes almost clipped, and the tensions wind to induce in the reader a state of mind analogous to that of the narrator and create a novel whose end you don’t want to reach, but must.
Ken Macleod
The novel opens with a near penniless Frederick Boyle landing in this heaving nest of intrigue and the prose is a dance in itself, weaving through the hideously censured world of Uruguay in the 70’s. The dance fascinated me, I learned a lot as Frederick Boyle evolves into Ramon Bolio and works his way through the process of becoming a Milonguero – a master of the dance.
Kate Bousfield
I finished this last night and thought it was very, very good. Books that make you think are often dense and hard to read. This was compulsive and thought-provoking at the same time... Thanks for a great reading experience. I ended up breathless as if I’d just danced a tango.
Ann Cleeves
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