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"A prominent Weston physician has just shot and killed his wife."
I think the story starts here.
I think the story starts here.
I think that the story starts on page twelve, when Elaine McGill (wife of prominent dermatologist Paul McGill) is boinking horn-dog medical student Mike Traynor in a tourist cabin.
("Don't worry," she says. "My husband plays golf every Wednesday afternoon.")
She desperately wants a baby for her husband, and is willing to go to any lengths to get one. Any lengths. She can't go to the clinic to get artificially inseminated, though, because then her husband would find out and would know it wasn't really his. She picked Mike because, as a student, she can tell him that if he breathes a word he'll get flunked, and because he looks like her DH.
He does her. Then, he notices that she didn't have an orgasm, so he does her again, and this time she does (leaving her feeling Very Guilty). She's also convinced that this time it took and she's now all pregnant and everything.
Mike heads out trying to make it back to the hospital before his shift in the ED starts, and at that moment the news comes on the radio that Lorrie's been plugged by her hubby. "Holy Crom!" Mike says, or words to that effect, "If he'd come home early a week ago that woulda been me!"
Thus ... Mike as main character. And, thus a good starting place.
He does her. Then, he notices that she didn't have an orgasm, so he does her again,
It does seem a tad unlikely just for F-buddies though.
The trouble wasn't sex, he was sure; actually that had almost disappeared from their relationship these past eight to twelve months while Amy had been engaged in her relentless campaign to become state president of the auxiliary. Sex was always in plentiful supply around a hospital, the major part of whose personnel was composed of women, and he'd had no trouble finding all the release he needed there.
The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokio who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokio who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion.
That there is one hell of a long sentence. I got lost about three lines in and it took a Sherpa and a St Bernard to help me out and make sense of it.
The question is, as always, do you turn the page?
Not if I'm reading for pleasure, but perhaps if I'm looking for something to analyse or study.The question is, as always, do you turn the page?
He lit his umpteenth cigarette of the morning, which was a pity, because it meant he couldn’t smell the roses, the lilac, or the honey-sweet laburnum in the garden.
Well, folks. Many of y'all decided not to turn the page for that last novel.
Here's a different book:
The question is, as always, do you turn the page?
Well, folks. Many of y'all decided not to turn the page for that last novel.
Here's a different book:
The question is, as always, do you turn the page?