> Skip to content
  • Published: 2 November 2015
  • ISBN: 9780099581437
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $27.99

Painting Death

  • Tim Parks



The horrifying and entertaining tale of an unrepentant bourgeois serial killer, Morris Duckworth, and his adventures in Veronese high society.

From the bestselling author of Italian Ways and Italian Neighbours comes a darkly comic new novel of murder in Veronese high society

Morris Duckworth has a dark past. Having married and murdered his way into a wealthy Italian family he has now become a respected member of Veronese business life. But it’s not enough. 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. But as Morris meets stiff resistance from the director the 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…

  • Published: 2 November 2015
  • ISBN: 9780099581437
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $27.99

Praise for Painting Death

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

Neatly written, full of calamitous moments in which the comedy is suddenly elbowed aside by genuine emotion

D J Taylor, Spectator

Sharp, funny and satirical… This is one to relish

Guardian

mordant thriller

three stars, Telegraph