By Kerryn Goldsworthy
The Death of an Owl
PAUL TORDAY, WITH PIERS TORDAY
The Death of an owl Paul Torday & Piers Torday
WEIDENFELD & NICOLSON, $29.99
Paul Torday was a British writer who died in 2013 when his last novel was still unfinished, but his son Piers, also a writer, has finished it for him. Like his first, the internationally successful Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Torday's last is about the murky world of British politicians and their supporting casts of spinners, fixers, speechwriters and media managers. Charles Fryerne is from a very old English family. His friend from Oxford, the ruthless Andrew Landford, wants to be PM.When the two men and their wives are driving along a country road and hit a barn owl, Andrew's ambitions are threatened, for barn owls are a protected species. In this beautifully written and spooky book about politics, the supernatural raises its strange head in a fashion that readers will either love or hate.