Simon Baker

Don’t Bet on Osmium

The Lighted Rooms

By

Weidenfeld & Nicolson 429pp £12.99 order from our bookshop

At the beginning of this novel Eloise McAllister and her mother, Joan, look around a luxurious residential home in Wandsworth. Afterwards, Eloise receives a call from Claude, an ex-boyfriend with whom she is still friendly, and, to her slight annoyance, her mother grabs the telephone and starts chatting contentedly to Claude, who tells her that his lifelong scientific research into the properties of osmium is concluding successfully.

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