Synopses & Reviews
From the award-winning author of
A Good Man Africa and
An Ice-Cream War comes
Armadillo, a brilliant satirical noir set in contemporary London.
To his colleagues, Lorimer Black, the handsome, mild-mannered insurance adjuster rising through the ranks of his London firm, is known as the guy who has it all: the sleek suits, the enviable status. But when Lorimer arrives at a routine business appointment and finds his client hanging from a water pipe, his life spirals out of control. His company car is blowtorched after he investigates a fire at a luxury hotel. He becomes the fall guy of a new colleague who puts the company in the red and the victim of a vicious attack by the possessive husband of a mysterious actress.
As Lorimer becomes increasingly entangled in an apparent conspiracy that involves everyone he knows, his own past comes to light. A brilliant satirical noir, Armadillo confirms Boyd's place as England's most versatile, sublime novelist.
Synopsis
On a cold winter's morning, Lorimer Black, an insurance adjustor -- young, good-looking, on the rise -- goes to keep a perfectly ordinary appointment only to find a hanged man.
His life is about to be turned upside down and in directions he never imagined. The elements at play: A beautiful actress with whom he finds himself falling in love after a quick glimpse of her in a passing taxi ... an odd, new, business associate whose hiring, firing and rehiring make little sense ... a rock musician whose loss -- in this case of his mind -- may be "adjusted" by the insurance company. What ties it all together: a web of fraud in which virtually everyone he knows is somewhat involved, a web in which he finds himself being increasingly entangled.
About the Author
William Boyd was born in Ghana and educated at the universities of Nice, Glasgow and Oxford. His first novel, A Good Man in Africa, won the 1981 Whitbread Prize and the 1982 Somerset Maugham Award; his second, An Ice-Cream War, was winner of the 1982 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and short-listed for the Booker Prize. He is also the author of the novels Stars and Bars and The New Confessions, and On the Yankee Station, a collection of short stories. Brazzaville Beach, published in 1990, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
Boyd's screenplays include Mr. Johnson, based on the Joyce Cary novel, which was filmed in Africa and directed by Bruce Beresford. Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, from the book by Mario Vargas Llosa, was directed by Jon Amiel and starred Peter Falk and Barbara Hershey. He co-wrote the screenplay for Richard Attenborough's Chaplin, which starred Robert Downey, Jr. He lives in London and Paris, France.