The Blackmailer

by Isabel Colegate

Anthony Lane is dead, a casualty of the Korean War, and at home in England he is praised a hero. But Baldwin Reeves, who served with him, knows the truth: Lane, a traitor and a coward, was executed ignominiously by his own men. Envious of the wealth and social position Lane possessed, Reeves decides to put his knowledge to good use by blackmailing his widow Judith. Anxious to prevent a scandal and protect Lane's elderly mother from the disclosure of his disgrace, Judith seems to be wholly into Reeves's power. But when the blackmailer finds himself falling in love with his victim, the balance of power shifts, and the stage is set for an ironic and surprising conclusion.

Darkly humorous, with a wonderfully offbeat cast of characters and featuring the distinguished style for which she is known, The Blackmailer (1958) was the first novel by Isabel Colegate, author of the modern classic The Shooting Party. This edition, the first in 30 years, includes a new foreword by the author.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Crime, Ebooks, British Literature, 20th Century

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Isabel Colegate was born in 1931 in London and was educated at Runton Hill School in Norfolk. In 1952 she went into partnership with Anthony Blond, who was then starting a literary agency and would go on to found a publishing house, and in 1953 she married Michael Briggs, with whom she has a daughter and two sons.

Colegate’s first novel, The Blackmailer, was published by Blond in 1958 and was followed by two more novels focusing on English life in the years after the Second World War: A Man of Power (1960) and The Great Occasion (1962). These were later republished by Penguin in an omnibus volume, Three Novels, in 1983.

Though she has written a number of other successful novels, as well as reviews for the Spectator, Daily Telegraph and TLS, Colegate is best known for her bestseller and major critical success The Shooting Party (1980), which won the W.H. Smith Literary Award and was adapted for a now-classic 1985 film version. The book is still in print today (with Counterpoint in the US and as a Penguin Modern Classic in the UK). More recently, she has written the acclaimed novel Winter Journey (1995) and the non-fiction work Pelican in the Wilderness: Hermits and Solitaries (2002).

Isabel Colegate was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in1981. She and her husband live in Somerset.

Valancourt Books

Reviews

[K.J. Charles]

Intriguing 1950s novel set in publishing, in which a war hero's widow is blackmailed by a sleazy lawyer on the make, but things get a lot more complicated. One of those 'comedy of manners' type books that dissects feelings rather than conveying them. Funny in a chilly sort of way; I might read more by her but it's all a bit Evelyn Waugh for my taste tbh.

[Troy Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Isabel Colegate is an excellent writer and this book is great fun. It reminded me of Iris Murdoch and it could well have made a good Alfred Hitchcock film.

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good, but not fabulous debut novel. I found the prose maybe slightly better than adequate. The characters were real enough - not flat, but also not quite fully developed. It is quite short, and I think had she worked at it a bit more, she might have found it worth giving us another 100 pages or so. But then, maybe not.

I liked the premise of the storyline. The GR description gives away too much of the plot, I think. Certainly there could be more going on with her characters than she gives us. I'm having a hard time coming up with why I'm not a bit more enthusiastic. However, it's just a solid 3-stars. For me, that often means I found something wrong with it, but in this case it means I simply didn't find enough right with it to bump it up a level.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

funny and entertaining ! wonder what my bookclub will think👀

[Hester · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tight mid century comedy of manners where the main characters are standoffish with each other and with the reader but the minor characters sparkle in their comedic stereotypes .

The old old trope of good guy / bad guy vying for the same marital hand ( a widow whose impeccable husband died a war hero) is spiced with a twist on the blackmail story . There are plot similarities with The Heat of the Day / Elizabeth Bowen which , by coincidence , I was also reading .

Theres more than a nod to the cultural shift of the times (late 1950's London ); from "honourable" old money and it's values to thrusting individuals embracing new ways of gaining power. Television , film advertising and publishing are tools for the ambitious . Kinda apt given it's two days after an election in the USA where a candidate has shamelessly and utilised tools in the media for decades to gain power.

Some dated and , have to say , unpalatable assumptions in the actions of the three main characters makes it a frustrating read at times but the writing is tight and the comedic scenes well drawn .

[eddie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably a 3.5. I really liked the writing, but it felt more like a study a painter would do before starting on his main work. Characters were very well drawn, but it didn’t hang together as a novel. No shame to it, though.

[Ken Saunders · Rating 3 out of 5]

  Editor and war widow Judith is blackmailed to protect her husband's family and his legacy, finding herself in the noir territory Renov explored in his 1983 "Leave Her to Heaven: The Double Bind of the Post-War Woman". According to Renov, some post-WW2 noir flicks examined how women experienced the double bind of carrying on commerce while the men were fighting (in some cases taking over industrial labor a la 'Rosie the Riveter') and maintaining families on the domestic front. The double bind arose when the men came back from the front to reclaim jobs, and women were torn between their conflicting responsibilities and desires.

  In Judith's case, those responsibilities include her close relationship with her deceased husband's wealthy parents, caring for her surrogate child (in this case a "midget" servant adopted from France), and keeping her publishing office functional against the whims and fancies of her "work husband", playboy Feliks. Two manipulative, demanding figures enter Judith's life to provoke intellectual and sexual desires. These conflict with her roles and cause emotional disruption in all her relationships.

  I am referring to the story as noir because it contains so many familiar elements, but ultimately the criminal antics take backseat to the class struggle and emotional drama. Much of the text focuses on Judith's journey amid all the upheaval, portrayed in long, drawn out passages that wore out their welcome a bit. (I found Colegate's beautiful, descriptive passages about nature far more compelling.) While the book is amusing and I even laughed out loud a few times, overall it was too choppy and episodic to become a favorite.

"Her liking for responsibility was one reason for her liking for Jean-Claude. She wanted dependents. She had enjoyed the days when her widowed father had relied on her; she would have liked to have had a lot of children; in long daydreams she gave herself a kingdom and ruled it with scrupulous fairness and devotion. Jean-Claude was solitary and helpless. He needed to be fed, kept warm, and allowed to cook and clean; that was all he wanted, and Judith, in providing it, gladly assumed him as one of her duties."

[Simon S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Blackmailer is Isabel Colegate’s debut novel, published 1958 and it is a nicely crafted, spiky little comedy of deportment and demeanour under duress. Judith is an editor at an eccentric publishing house and the widow of the famed Anthony Lane, a British hero of the Korean war. Balwin Reeves is a solicitor who turns up at her home with a draft manuscript which certainly captures her attention. He served with Anthony and is well aware – and can evidence – that he was nothing but a craven coward who ended up getting other soldiers killed before being executed by his own men. Although doing well in his career, Reeves is not doing as well as he would like and suggests that Jill might like to help him out financially while he decides what to do with the manuscript. Purely a temporary arrangement, she must understand, until he is more stable.
Though Jill barely cares a hoot for the memory of her husband, she does owe a lot to his family, and for their sake she agrees to Reeves demand. They arrange to meet at a local restaurant to make the exchange. Fresh from the office Judith looks smart, strong and businesslike, and Reeves is very taken with her. Once they get past the initial unpleasantness, Judith finds herself attracted to his self-confidence and charm.
The scene is set for an enjoyable Muriel Spark-ish rollick through publishing, the legal profession, the landed gentry, and unexpected sexual desire. Judith and Baldwin are initially appalled by their attraction to each other, it contravenes everything they know about love, respect and trust: basically they really, really, fancy each other, and don’t know what they can do about it, enmired in the whole “blackmail” thing as they are.

Funny and a bit wicked.

[Andy Weston · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first Colegate, and I liked it, I'll be back for more. She writes with dark humour, in a satirical manner that entertains.

This is set in 1950s London and chiefly concerns Judith Lane, the young widow of the war hero Anthony Lane, and an editor at the fashionable publisher Hanescu Lane & Co. The other main character is the scoundrel Baldwin Reeves, a barrister with ambition towards politics and financial success, all to be accepted socially by the upper crust of London society.

Reeves reveals to Judith that her husband's time in Korea wasn't as glorious as the newspapers claimed, and blackmails her. As repugnant as Reeves is, Judith is somehow attracted to him, and goes along with his demands, but they are soon both, very much, out of their depth.

It may sound a fairly ordinary sort of take, but Colegate has piercing wit, and that is what makes it such a pleasure to read.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sharp, savage and sinister.

[Ross McClintock · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a nice, diverting little story. Basically a blackmailer approaches the widow of a war hero with information that her husband didn't really act all that heroically in war. However, he is an inept blackmailer and finds himself entangled in her life. The real joy here is the side characters and writing here. Colgate takes essentially a very British story involving the class system, but adds unique enough characters to make it entertaining

[Carla]

One of those novels that only the English can write, with a wry, unsentimental sophisticafion. It's about a comically inept blackmailer whose victim, a young widow, turns out to be more than his match. The secondary characters are a lot of fun--the dotty family (it is England), a lovestruck college student, a literary imoressario, and a fierce midget. Not an extra word in this one.