The Destroying of Harry Blyne

by Peter Moir Fotheringham

First, they wrecked his marriage. The attractive blonde who created the traumatic scene in the restaurant was completely convincing. She was Harry's mistress, she said, and what was he doing dining with a woman when he was supposed to be at a writer's conference in Edinburgh? And who was the woman anyway - a cheap pick-up? The woman, of course, was Harry's wife, and there was no way he could persuade her of his innocence. She threw him out. But that was relatively harmless compared to what they did to him later. Within a short time the bewildered Harry Blyne is an outcast, living in a miserable attic room, short of money, friendless, physically and mentally shattered. The persecution continues relentlessly. And still he has no idea who is doing it or why. But when he hits rock bottom, Harry Blyne discovers something about himself he'd never known: He has guts. Using the only skill he possesses, he begins to fight back against the anonymous persecutors determined to destroy his life.

191 pages, Hardcover

First published October 31, 1993

Reviews

[Thomas Radigan]

A moderately successful author, essentially the kept man of a rich woman, has a restaurant dinner with his wife when a gorgeous woman suddenly barges in and claims to be his mistress. The infuriated wife throws him out of his home. Then his other friends hear that he is a child molester and want nothing to do with him. A supposedly kindly woman offers him an attic apartment to live in, but he gets beaten up, poisoned, receiving harassing phone calls from a woman saying he destroyed a man she loved, goes to the police and is not believed, has child pornography planted in his apartment...and finally finds it in himself to run off and go after his pursuers, one he finds out who one of them are.

As a thriller, it makes you sympathize with Harry Blyne and hope his fight back is successful. But the story has two gaping holes in it. One is that his wife too readily believes the lies against him, and that the conspirators never seem quite believable. But as entertainment it works.

[LJ]

THE DESTROYING OF HARRY BLYNE (Suspense-Harry Blyne-England-Cont) - Ex
Fotheringham, Peter Moir - Standalone

From Fantastic Fiction: Who could be a more vulnerable hero than a novelist in search of a plot? In The Destroying of Harry Blyne, Scottish writer Peter Moir Fotheringham fashions a muscular tale from the plight of a floundering author whose satisfying though uninspired life suddenly takes on nightmare colors when someone starts trying to drive him mad. In the end his troubles inspire him to new levels of creativity, but not before he undergoes assorted horrors. Blyne is a highly sympathetic character transfixed and then transformed by events.

This was an excellent story within a story. Very good suspense.