Jim Francis has finally found the perfect life âe" and is now unrecognisable, even to himself. A successful painter and sculptor, he lives quietly with his wife, Melanie, and their two young daughters, in an affluent beach town in California. Some say heâe(tm)s a fake and a con man, while others see him as a genuine visionary. But Francis has a very dark past, with another identity and a very different set of values. When he crosses the Atlantic to his native Scotland, for the funeral of a murdered son he barely knew, his old Edinburgh community expects him to take bloody revenge. But as he confronts his previous life, all those friends and enemies âe" and, most alarmingly, his former self âe" Francis seems to have other ideas. When Melanie discovers something gruesome in California, which indicates that her husbandâe(tm)s violent past might also be his psychotic present, things start to go very bad, very quickly. The Blade Artist is an elegant, electrifying novel âe" ultra violent but curiously redemptive âe" and it marks the return of one of modern fictionâe(tm)s most infamous, terrifying characters, the incendiary Francis Begbie from Trainspotting.
Promotion info
The most terrifying character in Trainspotting returns - with his own novel
Reviews
"This has the makings of 'peak Welsh': funny, filthy, literary smack." -- Sam Parker Esquire "In a year when filming begins on Danny Boyle's sequel of sorts to Trainspotting, it seems perfect timing to revisit its most visceral force." Skinny "An ultra-violent odyssey through the darkest recesses of urban life." Hot Press
Author description
Irvine Welsh is the author of ten previous novels and four books of shorter fiction. He currently lives in Chicago.
