Retribution

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Susan Isaacs

In Susan Isaac's most ambitious and dazzling novel to date, we are introduced to Lee White, a criminal defense lawyer practicing on Long Island. Into her life drifts Norman Torkelson, a career con man charged with strangling to death his latest mark. At first, as Lee explains to us, the case seems routine, the evidence overwhelming. Norman - manly, magnetic, and morally reprehensible - is a man who crisscrosses America looking for patsies for his cruel marriage scam: Love 'em, liquidate their assets, leave 'em. Clearly, he murdered Bobette Frisch, the dumpy, sour fiftysomething bar owner who had fallen madly in love with him. But just as Lee is resigning herself to the inevitable "Guilty!" verdict, she begins to have doubts. What, after all, was Norman's motive? Why not do what he had done for the last twenty years: run, and leave behind a broke and brokenhearted victim? Lee starts to wonder if her client is not merely not guilty but covering for the real killer and, in doing so, performing the first selfless act of his life. As the Torkelson case unfolds, a second narrator chimes in to tell us the story behind the story: the tale of Lee's life. Born Lily White, Lee is a smart, pretty, and privileged child coming of age on Long Island. Her parents have little time for her or her younger sister, devoted as they are to the pursuit of shallowness. Her mother, Sylvia, who looks like Lauren Bacall's twin sister with a mild eating disorder, is busy with the exhausting work of keeping up her wardrobe. Her father, Leonard Weissberg - Weiss - and finally White, is consumed by his chi-chi Manhattan fur salon, his model-bookkeeper mistress, and his obsession with the family next door, the old-money, oh-so-social Taylors. When Lee marries Jazz Taylor, the scion of these blue-bloods, her life seems blessed. Suddenly she has her mother's approval, her father's love - and a sublime husband. No matter that she has to give up her dream job in the Manhattan D.A.'s Office to move back to Long Island with him; that's what marriage is, a series of compromises made in the name of love. Isn't it?

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Helen Dunmore

Louise married Paul, brother to Johnnie...Yet she doesn't get one man with this union – she gets two. Born twelve years apart in a one-bedroom flat in Barking, Paul and Johnnie are close: they're good at making money and make taking power look easy. But while Paul deals in contaminated land, Johnnie is adept at dealing in crime.And when Louise's relationship with the brothers is further complicated by the birth of her daughter Anna, it seems nothing can ever break this triangle. Until Johnnie's self-destructive streak begins to threaten them all...

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Thomas Berger

"Since childhood, Sam Grandy and Roy Courtright have been best friends. They grew up in the same prosperous community, went to the same prep school, and later entered the same university. After Sam's father died, Roy's father looked after him. At one point Sam dated Roy's sister, Robin. As best friends, they share a close and loving bond, often stronger than the relationships other men share with their girlfriends, siblings, or wives.". "But in the twenty years since their friendship began, their fundamental differences have become more apparent and their relationship has grown strained. More and more often they realize they are opposites - one a womanizer, the other a devoted husband; one careless with money, the other frugal; one independent, the other needy. Do these differences threaten their friendship - or are the dissimilarities what make it possible? Can they escape the ties of their past, or are they intrinsically bound until death?" "When Sam's health begins to falter, he draws Roy into his life again - and into a chain of deceit, sex, delusion, death, and love such as only a best friend could."--BOOK JACKET.

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traduit de l'anglais (États-Unis) par Anne Wicke

En 2006, le corps de Chuck est retrouvé au fond d'un canal à New York. A Londres, Hans van den Broek, banquier hollandais, se souvient de l'amitié qui les a réunis quelques années plus tôt : au lendemain du 11 septembre, perdu dans Manhattan, sa famille l'ayant quitté, il rencontre Chuck, sorte de marginal aux goûts de luxe. Hans ne connaîtra sa véritable identité que bien plus tard.--Résumé de l'éditeur.