Overview

A compelling story of old loves and old secrets… Sebastian, the fifty-six-year-old patriarch of the Locke clan, is handsome, charismatic, a man of immense charm and intelligence. He heads up the philanthropic Locke Foundation, funded by the vast family fortune built by his forefathers. Committed to relieving the suffering of those in genuine need, Locke travels the globe, personally giving away millions a year to the poor, the sick, and the victims of natural disasters and wars. He is seen as a beacon of light in today’s darkly violent world. That is why the police are so baffled when Sebastian is found dead in mysterious circumstances. Has he been murdered, and if so who would want to kill the world’s greatest philanthropist? Could such an upstanding man have enemies? Vivienne Trent, an American journalist, met Locke as a child, married him, divorced him, but stayed close to him. Aware that there was another side to this engimatic man, she sets out to find the truth about his death and about Locke himself.

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9780586217399

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`Few novelists are as consummate as Barbara Taylor Bradford at keeping the reader turning the page. She is one of the world's best at spinning yarns.' Guardian

The tenth romantic leviathan from Bradford (Everything to Gain, 1994, etc.), now with more than a bit of mystery thrown in. What could have caused the suicide (or was it murder?) of world-renowned philanthropist Sebastian Locke, head of Locke Industries? Four narrators, intimately involved with the case, agonize and confide in handsome places in New York, Connecticut, and city-and-wine-country France. Vivienne, a journalist and one of Sebastian's five former wives, had lunch with the handsome billionaire just days before his death. Then he'd seemed sublimely happy as he announced his plans to remarry, this time to a research scientist in Africa. Vivienne and Sebastian's own divorce had been amicable; she'd fallen in love with Sebastian, then her mother's lover, when she was 12 and had married him ten years later. And even post-divorce Vivienne still loved Sebastian, though his children, Jack and Luciana, were obsessed at opposite poles: Jack's early resentment of his father (Jack adored Vivienne's mother, killed in a cellar-stairs fall) was ruining Sebastian's love life; and Luciana, though worshiping her father, still chafed at what she considered her minor role in Locke Industries. All are baffled and bewildered by the death. It isn't until Vivienne, in Paris, hears the shocking tale of dying, elderly Zoe, the Countess of Grenaille (nee Mary Ellen Rafferty of New Jersey), that the mystery of Sebastian's demise is solved. By end, calm and sweet reason prevail for all the disaffected. Bradford is ill at ease in the mystery frame: Her red herrings are whale-size, her solution enterprisingly cuckoo - a Rube Goldberg invention. But, still, all the Bradford stylistic pontoons - garrulous smoothies holding forth in luxurious settings - keep this afloat for the waiting fans. (Kirkus Reviews)

'Few novelists are as consummate as Barbara Taylor Bradford at keeping the reader turning the page. She is one of the world's best at spinning yarns.' Guardian

Author Information

Barbara Taylor Bradford was born in Leeds, and by the age of twenty was an editor and columnist on Fleet Street. Her first novel, A Woman of Substance, became an enduring worldwide bestseller. Her novels have sold more than eighty-five million copies worldwide in more than ninety countries and forty languages, and ten mini-series and television movies have been made of her books. She lives in New York City with her husband, television producer Robert Bradford.

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