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Published Feb 2016
368 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
From the #1 internationally bestselling author of The Moment and Five Days comes "the best book about Morocco since The Sheltering Sky. Completely absorbing and atmospheric" (Philip Kerr).
Robin knew Paul wasn't perfect. But he said they were so lucky to have found each other, and she believed it was true.
She is a meticulous accountant, almost forty. He is an artist and university professor, twenty years older. When Paul suggests a month in Morocco, where he once lived and worked, a place where the modern meets the medieval, Robin reluctantly agrees.
Once immersed into the swirling, white hot exotica of a walled city on the North African Atlantic coast, Robin finds herself acclimatizing to its wonderful strangeness. Paul is everything she wants him to be - passionate, talented, knowledgeable. She is convinced that it is here she will finally become pregnant.
But then Paul suddenly disappears, and Robin finds herself the prime suspect in the police inquiry. As her understanding of the truth starts to unravel, Robin lurches from the crumbling art deco of Casablanca to the daunting Sahara, caught in an increasingly terrifying spiral from which there is no easy escape.
With his acclaimed ability to write thought-provoking page-turners, Douglas Kennedy takes readers into a world where only Patricia Highsmith has ever dared. The Blue Hour is a roller-coaster journey into a heart of darkness that asks the question: What would you do if your life depended on it?
"Douglas writes with verve, and plot twists, several sharply drawn characters and an exotic locale give the novel a cinematic quality. Hand this to readers looking for a page-turner with a strong female protagonist." - Booklist
"Kennedy has a knack for portraying characters readers love to hate." - Kirkus
"Morocco - vividly described - is a shock of heat, smells, and searing colors…. Kennedy is one of the few writers to understand that people in love are basically insane; this love story darkens into a thriller as the methodical Robin pursues the truth. Romance noir, superbly written." - The Times (UK)
"The best book about Morocco since The Sheltering Sky. Completely absorbing and atmospheric." - Philip Kerr
"Douglas does it again! This is the kind of novel you absolutely cannot put down, the kind that gets your pulse racing, to such an extent you have to switch off your phone, ignore your entourage, and devour to the very end. Brilliantly compelling, startling, and exotic, definitely one of Kennedy's best works." - Tatiana de Rosnay
"A gripping thriller, this book poses a universal question: how far are we prepared to go in pursuit of the truth, and do we really want the answers when we find them?" - Louise Doughty
This information about The Blue Hour was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Paul Stuart
Douglas Kennedy is the author of more than a dozen novels, including the international bestsellers The Big Picture, The Pursuit of Happiness, Leaving the World and The Moment. His latest novel, The Heat of Betrayal, is now available in English and in French as Mirage (with an American publication in Feb. 2016 under the title, The Blue Hour). He is also the author of three highly-praised travel books. Several of his novels have been filmed, including The Big Picture (starring Romain Duris and Catherine Deneuve) and The Woman in the Fifth (with Ethan Hawke and Kristen Scott Thomas).
Born in Manhattan in 1955, he has two children, Max and Amelia, and currently divides his time between Manhattan, Paris, London, Montreal and Maine
... Full Biography
Author Interview
Link to Douglas Kennedy's Website
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