Gilbert Adair Books In Order

The Act of Roger Murgatroyd

Boxing Day circa 1935. A Christmas party in a snowed in manor on the edge of Dartmoor, England. Overhead, in the attic, lies the dead body of Raymond Gentry, gossip columnist and blackmailer. But the attic door is locked from the inside, its sole window is traversed by thick iron bars and, naturally, there is no sign of a murderer or a murder weapon.

Despite the snowdrifts, the local doctor manages to fetch Trubshawe, a retired Scotland Yard inspector, from his cottage a few miles away. Trubshawe politely questions all, or nearly all, of the suspects and finds a lot of skeletons in a lot of cupboards, but it is one of the house guests, the formidable Evadne Mount, best selling author of countless classic whodunits, who discovers the solution. In fact, were she not its presiding sleuth, The Act of Roger Murgatroyd is exactly the type of whodunit she herself might have written

And Then There Was No One

The writer and professional controversialist Gustav Slavorigin is murdered in the small Swiss town of Meiringen during its annual Sherlock Holmes Festival, his body discovered with an arrow through the heart. With a price of ten million dollars on Slavorigin’s head, almost none of the Festival’s guests can be regarded as above suspicion. Except Evadne Mount, of course, the stubborn amateur sleuth and bestselling crime novelist from Gilbert Adair’s ‘The Act of Roger Murgatroyd’ and ‘A Mysterious Affair of Style’. Neither of those two cases, however, prepared her for the jaw dropping twists of this new investigation, which climaxes at Meiringen’s principal tourist attraction, the Reichenbach Falls the site of Holmes’ fatal confrontation with his nemesis, Moriarty…

Alice Through the Needle’s Eye

Alice travels through the eye of a needle and meets many unusual creatures including the letters of the alphabet.

The Holy Innocents

In May 1968, a brother and sister, young, clever and aristocratic, and incestuously involved, become friends with an American who is studying film in Paris. When their parents go on vacation, they invite the American to stay with them in their flat, where they start to play games.

Love and Death on Long Island

When a cerebral British author becomes enamored of an American teenage pop icon his first attraction to another male, his life spirals out of control. This novel, which references DEATH IN VENICE and LOLITA, as much as TUFF TURF and PORKY’S, is a heartrending, hilarious, and totally convincing story of unrequited love. This is the tie in novel to the movie of the same title, starring Jason Priestly and John Hurt.

The Death of the Author

In a jet black satire based on a real life scandal, the leading writer in a school of literary criticism that says authors are meaningless ‘dead’ is discovered to have been a Na*zi.

Gilbert Adair is the author of Love and Death on Long Island and the screenplay for Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers.

Buenas Noches, Buenos Aires

A wonderfully funny yet tender evocation of the hedonistic 1980s. A young gay British man comes to 1980s Paris to teach English and to taste the erotic life that has eluded him in Britain. He suddenly finds himself in the midst of a sexual free-for-all beyond his wildest dreams – and then the AIDS epidemic hits. A beautiful, profane and witty novel from one of the masters of the form.

Inspiration for Death in Venice-The Real Tadzio 1900-1962

In the summer of 1911, the German writer Thomas Mann visited Venice in the company of his wife Katia. There, in the Grand Hotel des Bains, as he waited for the dinner gong to ring, the author’s roving eye was drawn to a nearby Polish family, the Moeses, consisting of a mother, three daughters, and a young sailor suited son who, to Mann, exuded an almost supernatural beauty and grace. Inspired by this glancing encounter with the luminous child, Mann wrote Death in Venice, and the infatuated writer made of that boy, Wladyslaw Moes, one of the twentieth century s most potent and enduring icons. According to Gilbert Adair in his sparkling evocation of that idyll on the Adriatic, Mann wrote his novella, ‘as though taking dictation from God.’ But precisely who was the boy? And what was his reaction to the publication of Death in Venice in 1912 and, later, the release of Luchino Visconti s film adaptation in 1971? In this revealing portrait, including telling photographs, Gilbert Adair brilliantly juxtaposes the life of Wladyslaw Moes with that of his mythic twin, Tadzio. It is a fascinating account of a man who was immortalized by a genius, yet forgotten by history.

Flickers

The author presents a single image from each of 100 years of cinema, together with a short essay on both the still itself and what that image represents in terms of film history. His aim has been to encompass the many facets of film without reducing the book to an academic inventory of highlights.

Kubrick

The classic study of Kubrick available once again and fully updatedIf Stanley Kubrick had made only 2001: A Space Odyssey or Dr. Strangelove, his cinematic legacy would have been assured. But from his first feature film, Fear and Desire, to the posthumously released Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick created an accomplished body of work unique in its scope, diversity, and artistry, and by turns both lauded and controversial. In this newly revised and definitive edition of his now classic study, film critic Michel Ciment provides an insightful examination of Kubrick‘s thirteen films including such favorites as Lolita, A Clockwork Orange, and Full Metal Jacket alongside an assemblage of more than four hundred photographs that form a complementary photo essay. Rounding out this unique work are a short biography of Kubrick; interviews with the director, as well as cast and crew members, including Malcolm McDowell, Shelley Duvall, and Jack Nicholson; and a detailed filmography and bibliography. Meshed with masterful integrity, the book’s text and illustrations pay homage to one of the most visionary, original, and demanding filmmakers of our time.

The Real Tadzio

In the summer of 1911, the German writer Thomas Mann visited Venice in the company of his wife Katia. There, in the Grand Hotel des Bains, as he waited for the dinner gong to ring, the author’s roving eye was drawn to a nearby Polish family, the Moeses, consisting of a mother, three daughters, and a young sailor suited son who, to Mann, exuded an almost supernatural beauty and grace. Inspired by this glancing encounter with the luminous child, Mann wrote Death in Venice, and the infatuated writer made of that boy, Wladyslaw Moes, one of the twentieth century s most potent and enduring icons. According to Gilbert Adair in his sparkling evocation of that idyll on the Adriatic, Mann wrote his novella, as though taking dictation from God. But precisely who was the boy? And what was his reaction to the publication of Death in Venice in 1912 and, later, the release of Luchino Visconti s film adaptation in 1971? In this revealing portrait, including telling photographs, Gilbert Adair brilliantly juxtaposes the life of Wladyslaw Moes with that of his mythic twin, Tadzio. It is a fascinating account of a man who was immortalized by a genius, yet forgotten by history.