Peter Everett

Esta apasionante novela transcurre en Francia durante los años de la Segunda Guerra Mundial y tiene como protagonistas al poeta Louis Aragon y al pintor Henri Matisse. Con humanidad y finura, Peter Everett cuenta la historia de una rara amistad que superó ideologías en nombre del arte.

In 1912, in Storyville, the notorious red-light district of New Orleans, a photographer named E. J. Bellocq took a series of photographs of the women who worked in the brothels. Rediscovered in the 1950s, Bellocqs photographs have become famous, but the man himself remains a mystery.In Bellocqs Women, Peter Everett performs as remarkable a feat of fictional reconstruction as he did in Matisses War and The Voyages of Alfred Wallis. All we have of Bellocq are his photographs and a few fragmentary memories; in this extraordinary novel Everett not only brings the photographer to life - and with him his strange, tortured relationship with his mother and two young girls, one his landladys daughter, the other a child whore - but also his world - the opium dens and bar rooms of New Orleans and the whore houses with their surreal combination of violence and homeliness.

Alfred Wallis was born in 1855 and died in a workhouse in Cornwall in 1942. A fisherman, sailing from Newlyn, Mousehole and St Ives, he began to paint in the 1920s - strange, brilliant pictures of ships and the sea. In 1928 he was discovered in St Ives by Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood and for the rest of his life, alone in his tiny cottage, attacked by periods of madness, he painted furiously. In MATISSES WAR, Peter Everett explored the psyche of one of the most celebrated painters of our age. Here he performs a similar feat for another artist, one who knew no fame in his lifetime but whose paintings have found vast popularity since his death.

At seventy, Henri Matisse is a trim, clean old gentleman with a passion for naked women. He is UN MONSTRE SACRE who depicts with passion and conviction only what he takes pleasure in, only what he chooses to see. He is art personified. If there were no Matisse there would be no art as such. . . . He has purged everything from his painting except anxieties concerning structure and colour; his struggle is with these alone! MATISSES WAR is a minutely researched yet fictional account of Matisses life during the years 1939-1945. It is also a superb portrait of the lives of the major French artists and writers under the German occupation. Louis Aragon, Malraux, Picasso and Bonnard all appear prominently in the narrative.

** SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWAS ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION **In 1985, Peter Everett landed the job as Superintendent of Southwark Mortuary. In just six years hed gone from lowly assistant to running the UKs busiest murder morgue. He couldnt believe his luck.What he didnt know was that Southwark, operating in near-Victorian conditions, was a hotbed of corruption. Attendants stole from the dead, funeral homes paid bribes, and there was a lively trade in stolen body parts and recycled coffins.Set in the fascinating pre-DNA and psychological profiling years of 1985-87, this memoir tells a gripping and gruesome tale, with a unique insight into a world of death most of us dont ever see. Peter managed pathologists, oversaw post mortems and worked alongside Scotland Yards Murder Squad - including on the case of the serial killer, the Stockwell Strangler.This is a thrilling tale of murder and corruption in the mid-1980s, told with insight and compassion.