"William Coles has created a highly entertaining, plausible and fast-paced
fiction based on the life of the infamous inveterate gambler, Lord Lucan. From the first we are
drawn into the awfulness of Lucan's wasted life - his botched uxoricide and consequent murder of
his children's nanny - through the mouthpiece of Lucan himself - writing as it were after his
disappearance on a November night in 1974. Coles takes us into the mind of the wastrel and all
round bad egg, Lucan, whilst simultaneously making the reader feel sorry for him in his plight
post-1974: no mean feat for such a reptile. Fortunately the dead cannot sue for slander as two
fellow rogues - James Goldsmith and John Aspinall are equally portrayed as villainous swine with an
utter contempt for their fellow men. How true. It doesn't matter whether you know the story of
Lucan or not as Coles takes you through all the grim details whilst never losing the
genuine-sounding aristocratic tone of Lucan himself. This was a hugely enjoyable read which kept
this reader entertained for the four hours of one sitting it took me to read - compelling stuff. My
favourite line in the book refers not to Lucan but is, as it were, Lucan's view of his
friend/nemesis Goldsmith's endless bed-hopping: "even the women that he's loved most in the world
are eventually ground to dust under the wheels of his monstrous ego". Ouch!"
