Crush

A slow-burning intelligent thriller with a wicked twist in the tail from one of the giants of French noir fictionBored with her mundane factory job, her nagging mother and her alcoholic father-in-law, Louise is captivated by a glamorous American couple who move to her industrial hometown in Northern France. The Roolands' home is an island of colour, good humour and easy living in drab 1950s Léopoldville, and soon Louise is working there as a maid. But once she is under her new employers' roof their model life starts to fall apart – painful secrets from their past emerge, cracks in their relationship appear and a dark obsession begins to grow, which will end in murder…Frédéric Dard (1921-2000) was one of the best known and loved French crime writers of the twentieth century. Enormously prolific, he wrote more than three hundred thrillers, suspense stories, plays and screenplays, under a variety of noms de plume, throughout his long and illustrious career, which also saw him win the 1957 Grand prix de littérature policière for >em>The Executioner Weeps, forthcoming from Pushkin Vertigo. Dard's 

Bird in a Cage, 

The Wicked Go to Hell and

The Gravediggers' Bread are also available or forthcoming from Pushkin Vertigo.