Read, Piers Paul (Vol. 4) - Read, Piers Paul 1941–
Read, Piers Paul 1941–
Read, an English novelist, is the son of the poet and critic Sir Herbert Read. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 23-24.)
Piers Paul Read is a young English novelist with a speciality: exposing false innocents. He writes cool little horror stories about decent, well-intentioned people who suddenly find themselves up to their lily-white necks in evil. Good but tragically unaware Germans before World War II (The Junkers), for instance. Or the rich English boy (Monk Dawson) who sets out to be a saint, rather as if he were joining a club. Almost sinisterly quiet in tone, Read is a sad, skilled connoisseur of the moral blindness that occurs when self-righteousness and self-interest try to be one.
If the late J. P. Marquand had been crossed with Graham Greene, The Professor's Daughter might well have been the literary result. Here Read has zeroed in on another moral elitist, American style....
[The entire page is 1254 words long]
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