English down to his oxfords, Sir Edward Destry, head of one of London's most distinguished publishing houses, seems perfectly content to play a quiet supporting role as editor, translator, and publisher of his illustrious authors' great creations. But beneath this carefully constructed facade he is miserable, languishing in envy at the accomplishments of his most successful author and personal friend of thirty years, the dashing French war hero Nicolas Fabry. Handsome, confident, seductive, Fabry is in every respect the opposite of the retiring Sir Edward, and his successes on the Parisian literary stage are a mere shadow of his conquests on the field of love.Fabry's triumphs reach their pinnacle when he publishes a new novel, a work of tragic passion so powerful that no reader is left unmoved. An instant sensation, his novel rockets to the top of the French best-seller list. The country's most prestigious literary prize is his; a Nobel may follow. But when Sir Edward reads his friend's new book, what he finds plunges him into grief and fury. Fabry's fiction is no fiction. Its heroine is modeled on the only woman Sir Edward ever loved, a woman for whose fall from honor and tragic death he had always blamed himself. Now he discovers it was Fabry who seduced and abandoned her, leaving her to a shameful death and Sir Edward to a life of frustrated impotence. With dazzling precision and the passion of a man obsessed, Sir Edward plots his revenge. He translates Fabry's novel into English and devises a plan guaranteed to cause disgrace, ruin, and - death by publication. Read Less