The King is Dead (Paperback)

'Jim Lewis is an accomplished and erudite writer who wears these qualities lightly, making sure they dazzle and amuse rather than bewilder and confuse.' Erica Wagner, The Times Praise for Why The Tree Loves The Axe: 'A literary suspense novel that actually delivers -- a page-turner that will keep readers guessing till the end, their curiosity fueled as much by the book's gorgeously inventive imagery as by its seductive plot.' New York Times 'A clever, weird, utterly absorbing story told by a rare talent.' The Times Reviews for Why The Tree Loves The Axe: 'Lewis's imagery is startling, rich and strange.' Time Out By releasing the tallest of stories in a rush of rich language, Jim Lewis dazzles you into credulity. An unmissable novel.' She 'The language is lush, and the overall effect is surreal. Lewis manages to transform suburban life in the southern states into a post-gothic world of strange coincidences and vivid visual impressions... An eerie and atmospheric novel.' Financial Times

An intense novel, the spare sentences beautifully carved, each reeking of the Deep South with its almost courtly manners and a sense of distance from the rest of America. Into this dislocated state comes Walter Selby, a man who's reputation was forged by the violence of war. His gentle courtship of Nicole wins her hand in marriage, but her betrayal of him leads to violence, and leaves their beloved children as virtual orphans. The son of that marriage, Frank, grows into a disaffected adulthood, rootless and aimless, drifting away from the few that love him, as if he is waiting for the great event to jolt him back on track. Lewis1s third novel (after Sister and Why The Tree Loves The Axe) is the work of a craftsman, told with integrity and with the air of an empathy and a wisdom beyond the author's tender years, and which resonates long after the book is closed. A major work from a major talent. (Kirkus UK)

A legacy of instability and alienation plagues two generations in this ruthlessly compact third outing by Lewis (Why the Tree Loves the Ax, 1999, etc.). A tricky structure that involves leaps forward and backward in time and seemingly unrelated subplots eventually discloses connections between WWII hero and political functionary Walter Selby and his son Frank, a film actor whose burden of untold family secrets propels him into early retirement. The story's first half depicts Walter's infatuation with his eventual wife, beautiful, distractible Nicole Lattimore; his disillusioning tenure as aide to Tennessee's manipulative governor; and Walter's heartbroken discovery of Nicole's infidelity, after which he shoots her to death and is sent to prison. The second half portrays Frank as a foster child (who takes the surname of his "new" parents the Cartwrights) raised with his younger sister Gloria in ignorance of their family's past; a teenager obsessed with a seductive classmate (Kimmie Remington) on her way to becoming an irreversible paranoid schizophrenic; and a middle-aged divorced father whose buried energies are reawakened when aging film queen Lenore Riviere tempts him with a "riddling" story of a bastard prince's moral quandary involving his betrayed father and adulterous mother (which is, incidentally, the source of Lewis's title). There are also loosely related episodes featuring a murdered lottery winner and an itinerant Native American, and inexplicably, the full text of Casey Stengel's testimony before Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver's Antitrust and Monopoly Subcommittee. Lewis doesn't pull all these materials together, but does create some smashing effects in his denouement, as Frank travels to his dying father's bedside seeking the answer to the "riddle" that embraces father and son alike: "Where does a man go, if he's done wrong?" The tale's circuitous, cryptic organization is daunting, but Lewis's crisp, forthright style and arresting character portraits lead toward a most satisfying payoff. (Kirkus Reviews)

‘A marvellous and beautifully written novel that has at its blistered heart a story of doomed love.’