Francis King

Dressed To Kill

The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress

By

Little, Brown 201pp £16.99 order from our bookshop

When, many years ago, we were both resident in Brighton, Somerset Maugham’s nephew Robin would from time to time telephone to say that it was far too long since we had ‘surveyed the literary scene together’ – a phrase that he favoured – and how about meeting up for lunch or dinner? In fact, what he really wanted to survey was not the literary scene but his own ambitious part in it. We would then spend an hour or two discussing the progress of his latest novel in every smallest detail. Of course I felt flattered to be treated as his unacknowledged collaborator. But I could not help wishing that, on just one occasion, he would ask me: ‘And what about that book of yours?’ 

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • Tarantino's latest film is 'a fairy tale about Hollywood, where fantasy is an industrial product and the boulevards… ,
    • 'I don’t think we’re here on Earth to be Happy. I think we’re here on Earth to help God. I am a messianic writer'.… ,
    • 'Darley’s book is not a mad dash through this most compelling and complex of English counties. Nor is it another ti… ,
    • 'Moser’s book offers such a gripping account of a profoundly damaged human being, trapped in a cycle of repetition,… ,
    • 'Ideas that I’d thought were set down in full continue to smoulder ... this book is only a snapshot of some larger… ,
    • 'Full of invention which, at its most pedestrian, is eminently Victorian, and at its most unrestrained wildly imagi… ,
    • 'What in other hands could have been a dry, pedantic account of Christianity’s birth and evolution becomes in Holla… ,
    Follow Us