The glittering, sharp and sinister work of one of our most incisive and wickedly funny satirists; 'Isabel Colegate has no rival' (The Times)

'What we feel for each other is really a passion for power,' said Judith. 'We want to destroy each other by making the other fall in love with us.'

Judith Lane, not-quite-beautiful but charmingly serious, is the young widow of the war hero Anthony Lane, and an editor at the successful if rather rakish publisher Hanescu Lane & Co. Ltd. But one evening the harmonious routine of Judith’s life is interrupted when she receives her first visit from Baldwin Reeves, who reveals that Anthony’s wartime adventures were not quite as glorious as the newspaper reports would have her believe. To protect Anthony’s family from the scandal, Judith reluctantly acquiesces to the repellent but attractive Reeves’s demands – but both blackmailer and blackmailee soon find themselves out of their depth in ways they could not have anticipated.

Darkly funny, strangely sexy, and glittering with Isabel Colegate’s scalpel-sharp wit, The Blackmailer is a savage and sinister comic classic.

Ought to be a household name -- Eleanor Catton
Combine the slightly offbeat sensibility of Muriel Spark with the milieu of an Iris Murdoch novel and you’ll have something of an idea about this witty tale of extortion and romance, all played out against the gin-soaked backdrop of the 1950s London literary scene -- Lucy Scholes * BBC, 10 lost books you should know *
As a novelist of English manners, Isabel Colegate has no rival * The Times *
Flowing and unpretentious. She tells an excellent tale * Daily Telegraph *

Isabel Colegate was born in 1931 in London and was educated at Runton Hill School in Norfolk. In 1952 she went into partnership with Anthony Blond, who was then starting a literary agency and would go on to found a publishing house, and in 1953 she married Michael Briggs, with whom she has a daughter and two sons. Colegate’s first novel, The Blackmailer, was published in 1958 and was followed by twelve more novels and one work of non-fiction. Her bestselling novel The Shooting Party won the W.H. Smith Literary Award and was adapted for a now-classic 1985 film. She has written reviews for the Spectator, Daily Telegraph and Times Literary Supplement. Isabel Colegate was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1981. She lives in Somerset.