Patrick's Alphabet
  • Published: 1 July 2010
  • ISBN: 9781409000174
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 240

Patrick's Alphabet

Formats & editions
EBook
1 Jul 2010
Paperback
15 Mar 2007
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'By no means a conventional thriller, it is an intense and disturbing piece of fiction' - Observer

When a teenage couple are found murdered in their car, a boy called Adam Sligo is the only suspect. The letter A is found blazoned on the wall at the murder scene and is soon followed, around town, by the other letters of the alphabet, each immaculately painted in red. What do the letters mean? Is Sligo playing games with the police? Or putting a spell on the town?

Perry Scholes is mixed up in all this from the start: a man haunted by cars and death - and photographic images of both. He trawls the motorways and edgelands listening to police radio, getting to the car-crash or the crime scene before them. He makes a living selling these shots to the papers. He is the one who spots the painted letters, and begins to document their appearances.

As the town is paralysed by fear and paranoia, a vigilante cult emerges, arming itself for the battle against evil. Perry finds himself trapped in a nightmare. A killer is at large, and the alphabetical messages he leaves seem to be personal messages for him.
  • Published: 1 July 2010
  • ISBN: 9781409000174
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 240
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About the author

Michael Symmons Roberts

Michael Symmons Roberts was born in Preston, Lancashire in 1963. He has published six collections of poetry and received a number of accolades including the Forward Prize, the Costa Poetry Award and the Whitbread Poetry Prize. As a librettist, his work has been performed in concert halls and opera houses around the world. An award-winning broadcaster and dramatist, he has published two novels, and is Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

portrait photo of Michael Symmons Roberts

Also by Michael Symmons Roberts

Ransom
Mancunia
Deaths of the Poets
Selected Poems
Drysalter
Edgelands
Raising Sparks
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Praise for Patrick's Alphabet

A cold, existential tale... One of the terrific things the novel offers is his rendering of a town in the grip of a nameless fear

Observer

An impressive novel

Herald

An intriguing, gripping and highly unconventional crime novel

Times Literary Supplement

Crafty, sad and haunting

Literary Review

His corpse-strewn first novel derives its title from St Patrick's habit of inscribing letters on new territory to transform it...the atmosphere of creeping menace kept this heathen reading, simultaneously irked and intrigued

Mark Sanderson, Daily Telegraph

Stylistically accomplished

John Dugdale, Sunday Times

Suitably disturbing and unsettling, and lingers long in the mind

Daily Mail

The narrative voice turns it from a dark whodunit into something more intriguing. But Roberts never forgets that his principal responsibility is to keep us hooked - and that he does with aplomb

Barry Forshaw, Daily Express