The Horned Man (Paperback)

Lawrence Miller, an English ex-pat in New York is being persecuted - although he doesn't know why and cannot decide by whom. In this Kafkaesque tale Miller traverses in terror the streets of Manhattan, tracking the lines of connection across the city and to the suburbs beyond in wild pursuit of his enemies. An unforgettable debut excursion into urban paranoia.

An account of growing paranoia, this is a disturbing read. The narrator is an Englishman teaching gender studies and related literature in a New York university department. His routine rarely varies: there is a daily journey to and from his flat to work where he receives students in his office, gives classes and, from time to time, serves on a committee dealing with the establishment's policy on sexual harassment. All this is related in a dispassionate way, the style as flat as the life it describes. Sometimes events are mentioned which stir the reader's curiosity but they are listed along with the other minutiae and not explained. One example of this is his habit of leaving telephone messages to himself in order to relieve his loneliness and then erasing them without listening. Other odd things happen. First he begins to examine all the bits and pieces left in his office by the person who occupied it before him. Next he notices that they are being moved or have gone missing. He shifts the furniture about and comes to the conclusion that someone is hiding under his desk in order to spy on him. The reader struggles to accept these things and sympathize with the poor man and then a doubt creeps in. A growing suspicion that something is wrong with the narrator's perception of himself and of events gradually increases as more and more bizarre things happen to him and yet the deadpan manner of telling the story never wavers. It is this contrast between weird reality and the narrator's apparent unawareness of his strange behaviour which is so frightening. One passage which tells the story of his childhood stands out because the way it is written and the poignant circumstances described could come from another kind of novel altogether. These pages give the only clue to the madness. Cold, clear and scary. (Kirkus UK)

An intricate thriller about a college professor pursued by an unknown enemy, in a well-crafted debut novel from poet and short-story writer Lasdun (Three Evenings, 1992, etc.). Lawrence Miller gets paid to keep his eyes and ears open. A professor of gender studies at Arthur Clay College in New York, he sits on the college's sexual harassment committee and reviews complaints dealing with inappropriate behavior among faculty and students. The committee's proceedings tend to resemble those of a Star Chamber rather than a court of law, and Miller feels perfectly comfortable in bringing private (and anonymous) accusations of his own against certain professors on campus. Although the committee has a pretty free hand, its interventions have occasionally backfired-as in the case of the celebrated Bulgarian poet Bogomil Trumilcik, who denounced the committee and left the college in a huff when he was accused of making undue advances toward his students some years ago. Although the Trumilcik case transpired before Miller's arrival on campus, strange coincidences have lately made Miller suspicious that Trumilcik may be stalking him, or at least using Miller's office after-hours: Miller keeps finding inexplicable telephone calls on his bill, and documents by Trumilcik appear and vanish from his computer. Miller also learns that the woman who occupied the office before him was murdered in a bizarre case that has remained unsolved by the police. When Elaine Jordan, another committee member, suddenly disappears, Miller concludes that something is definitely amiss. But who's the culprit? As Miller's paranoia mounts, he begins to take the investigation into his own hands, even at one point entering a battered-women's shelter in drag to pursue a clue. When the answer arrives, it is likely to prove as much a shock to the reader as it is to Miller himself. Somewhat slow in setting his scenes, Lasdun nonetheless creates a vivid and terrifying account that gains intensity from momentum-and ultimately proves quite surprising in its denouement. (Kirkus Reviews)

‘intelligent, original and imaginative...'