Five Roundabouts to Heaven - Paperback

by John Bingham (Author)

Philip Bartels, an old friend of Peter Harding's, calls him out of the blue for advice about his marriage, a call that unwittingly sets them both out on a fateful journey, for the shy and respectable Philip - Barty to his friends - has met and fallen in love with the tempestuous Lorna but finds himself unable to leave his dull but loving wife. Peter offers some advice but after he too has met the passionate Lorna he also finds himself in love and begins to manipulate events in order to satisfy his own desires, finally with devastating and fateful results. FIVE ROUNDABOUTS is acknowledged as one of thriller writer John Bingham's masterpieces, and in his specially written foreword JOHN LE CARRE explains the value and the importance of Bingham's writing and why this particular book - an enormously exciting story of crime and passion - should be recognised as one of the last centuries great psychological thrillers.

Author Biography

John Bingham was the pen-name and family name of Lord Clanmorris. Born in York in 1908, he was educated at Cheltenham College and in France and Germany. One of his first jobs was as a reporter on the Hull Daily Mail and also as a feature writer for the Sunday Dispatch. On the outbreak of the Second World War he joined the Royal Engineers, moving in 1940 to work in the War Office. From 1950 until the late seventies he worked in the Ministry of Defence. My Name is Michael Sibley was his first novel, published in 1952. On the whole Bingham bypassed the usual crime-writing tricks of the trade to evoke surprise or mystery; instead he brought a new approach to crime fiction by emphasizing psychological realism. As Bingham himself explained: 'I am not so much interested in who committed, say, the murder, but in the psychological build-up, whether the murder will, in fact, be committed, and whether the criminal will be caught.' John Bingham wrote a total of seventeen crime novels and espionage thrillers over a thirty-year period. He was married to the playwright Madeleine Bingham and is the father of novelist Charlotte Bingham. He died in 1988. John le Carré is the internationally bestselling author of many crime thrillers, including Smiley's People, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.