Fascinated

by Miles Gibson

Frank Fisher, a marketing man for a tropical fruit company, walks out to post a letter one day and promptly disappears. He has fallen into the hands of eccentric underworld boss, Conrad Staggers. Reluctantly, he agrees to become an accomplice in gangland wars and act as a chaperone to Conrad's daughter, Valentine, a woman addicted to shopping and sex. Eventually, Frank is forced into a confrontation with a sinister hitman who has never been known to fail. ‘The blackest of comedies, sexy and unpredictable with a plot that convolutes like an eel on speed. Truly wild; dangerously funny.’ Literary Review ‘A gorgeously written romp through a London underworld of bruisers, mugs and molls.’ Financial Times

Genres: Fiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Miles Gibson (born 1947) is a reclusive English novelist, poet and artist.
Gibson was born in a squatters camp at an abandoned World War II airbase, RAF Holmsley South in the New Forest, and raised in Mudeford, Dorset. The camp was dubbed Tintown and had been sanctioned by Christchurch Town Council as a way to ease postwar housing shortages. He was educated at Sandhills Infant School, Somerford Junior School and Somerford Secondary Modern - now The Grange School.

Gibson’s darkly satirical writing has been described as both “magic realism” and “absurdist fiction”. Although his narratives remain linear in construction his employment of black humour, pastiche, and untrustworthy narrators places him firmly among the postmodernists.

Reviews

[Corey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I stand agape. This book knocked my socks off, put them on again, and then knocked them off once more. Miles Gibson is a wizard with words and a magus of storytelling. ‘Fascinated’ takes the mob novel and turns it inside out, its language a rarefied monkey chatter, its humor dark and present on every page, its outrageousness a wink and a slap on the ass. It’s also erotic and bloody in just the right measures. Simply put, this is one great novel.