Just started reading Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton this morning. It’s a much darker, more modern book than Craven House. So far, it’s wonderful. I stopped reading it on the train when I got to what I thought was an unimprovably good sentence:
Then he remembered, without any difficulty, what it was he had to do: he had to kill Netta Longdon.
Then on the way home I found that the sentence that followed was even better:
He was going to kill her, and then he was going to Maidenhead, where he would be happy.
Superb! You’ll have to wallow in 20,000 Street under the Sky next. Nick Hornby says “Patrick Hamilton’s sad, boozy London trilogy Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, written in the 1920s and republished this year, was a real discovery for me – it’s as if they’ve finally finished the stretch of motorway running from Dickens to Martin Amis.”
Thanks – I’ll put 20,000 Streets on my Christmas list. Nice quote from Nick Hornby.
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I’ve had similar agendas before, with “kick a Tory” nestled between killing Netta and being happy. As you do…