Cocaine Nights

Five people die in an unexplained house fire in the Spanish resort of Estrella de Mar, an exclusive enclave for the rich, retired British, centred on the thriving Club Nautico. The club manager, Frank Prentice, pleads guilty to charges of murder - yet not even the police believe him. When his Charles arrives to unravel the truth, he gradually discovers that behind the resort''s civilized facade flourishes a secret world of crime, drugs and illicit sex. At once an engrossing mystery and a novel of ideas, ''Cocaine Nights'' is a stunningly original work, a vision of a society coming to terms with a life of almost unlimited leisure. This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard''s works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Neil Gaiman, Zadie Smith, John Lanchester and Martin Amis) and brand-new cover designs.

About the author

J. G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai, where his father was a businessman. After internment in a civilian prison camp, he and his family returned to England in 1946. He published his first novel, The Drowned World, in 1961. His 1984 bestseller Empire of the Sun won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His memoir Miracles of Life was published in 2008. J. G. Ballard died in 2009.

James Lever was born in Bolton and educated in Oxford. He's 38, and spent his twenties writing an 800-page novel called ‘News Sport Weather’, whose subject was 'everything'. It wasn't any good, and nor was it published. He lives in London, where he has worked as a comedy-writer and performer, reviewer, ghost and editor. ‘Me Cheeta’ is his first novel.

Product details

• Authors: J G Ballard, J. G. Ballard, James Gr. Ballard, James Gr. 10000041041 Ballard, James Graham Ballard
• Assisted by: Lever James (Introduction)
• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.09.1997
• EAN: 9780006550648
• ISBN: 978-0-00-655064-8
• No. of pages: 329
• Dimensions: 130 mm x 196 mm x 19 mm
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Police Procedural, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), FICTION / Crime, Crime & mystery, FICTION / Literary, FICTION / Thrillers / Crime, FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense, Crime & mystery fiction, Organized crime, Drugs trade / drug trafficking, Criminal investigation & detection, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary