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  • Published: 15 October 2011
  • ISBN: 9780099539476
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $19.99

The Player's Curse

A Bella Wallis Mystery



Kidnap, cricket and cross-dressing: all in a day's work for Bella Wallis in her third thrilling Victorian mystery.

Bella Wallis – respectable society widow with a secret identity as a writer of sensationalist novels – is now happily engaged to the love of her life, Philip Westland. But Westland’s shadowy job, working for the British government, continually takes him abroad and away from the charismatic, impatient Bella. And then there is the matter of Westland’s sister’s incarceration in a French nunnery, a mystery about which he refuses to say a word.

Bella is convinced that their future together can only be resolved by getting to the bottom of his secret. The resulting quest will take her from the Oval, and a vicious curse laid on champion batsman W.G Grace, to the desolate moors of Yorkshire, on the trail of some decidedly dangerous women and a surprisingly chatty hermit…

  • Published: 15 October 2011
  • ISBN: 9780099539476
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $19.99

About the author

Brian Thompson

Brian Thompson was born in London in 1935 and now lives in Oxford. He has written three volumes of memoir: Keeping Mum (2006), winner of the Costa Prize for Biography and the PEN/Ackerley Prize, Clever Girl (2007), longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, and A Corner of Paradise (2013). He is also the author of the Bella Wallis mystery series, also published by Chatto.

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Praise for The Player's Curse

Brian Thompson writes well and there is a rich vein of humour

Daily Mail

Thompson specialises in sharp, elliptical dialogue and brisk little glances into the murk that rises beyond Bella's window

Guardian

Bella Wallis is a joy to follow

The Historical Novels Review

A glorious heroine

John Harvey