LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
Twisty, twisted and teeming with psychological suspense and sexual obsession, it’s no wonder that this cuttingly engrossing novel is also enjoying success as a major TV production starring Hugh Laurie, now into its second season.
Neuropsychiatrist Eldon Chance is in the process of splitting from his wife when he becomes entangled with one of his patients, insatiable, instable Jackie Black who suffers from an identity disorder. While it’s set in the author’s native California, this novel is certainly no barrel of good vibrations. With Jackie’s violent homicide detective ex-husband on his tail, Chance seems fated for the proverbial plunge that follows pride, and then there’s his relationship with a self-professed Samurai who goes by the name of “D” - is D really the military vet he claims to be, or has he fashioned this false, alternate persona? Complex, compelling and continually surprising, this gritty fix of San Franciscan noir is a bold and fiercely gripping read. Joanne Owen
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Joanne Owen
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About
Chance Synopsis
Chance is a dark story about psychiatric mystery, sexual obsession, fractured identities, and terrifyingly realistic violence; a tale told amid the back streets of California’s Bay Area, far from the cleansing breezes of the ocean.
The antihero of this book, Dr. Eldon Chance, a neuropsychiatrist, is a man primed for spectacular ruin. Into Dr. Chance’s blighted life walks Jaclyn Blackstone, the abused, attractive wife of an Oakland homicide detective, a violent and jealous man. Jaclyn appears to be suffering from a dissociative identity disorder. In time, Chance will fall into bed with her; or is it with her alter ego, the voracious and volatile Jackie Black? The not-so-good doctor, despite his professional training, isn’t quite sure and soon finds himself up against her husband, Raymond, a formidable and dangerous adversary.
Meanwhile, Chance also meets a young man named D, a self-styled, streetwise philosopher skilled in the art of the blade. It is around this trio of unique and dangerous individuals that long-guarded secrets begin to unravel, obsessions grow, and the doctor’s carefully arranged life comes to the brink of implosion. Chance is a twisted, harrowing, and impossible-to-put-down head trip through the fun house of fate; it's not pretty, it's not sweet, but it is disturbing and unforgettable.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780857301628 |
| Publication date: |
7th December 2017 |
| Author: |
Kem Nunn |
| Publisher: |
No Exit Press an imprint of Oldcastle Books Ltd |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
352 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Modern and Contemporary Fiction
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| Other Genres: |
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| Recommendations: |
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Press Reviews
Kem Nunn Press Reviews
'Chance takes place in the twilit world of noir, where people and things are never what they seem…For all the mayhem, its ending is delicately funny' - New York Times Book Review
'Is it too much to compare Kem Nunn to Raymond Chandler? Like Chandler, Nunn's great subject is what lies beneath the surface, the desolation that infuses us at every turn. . . The power of this disturbing and provocative novel is that it leaves us unmoored among the signposts of a morally ambiguous universe in which, even after we have finished reading, it is uncertain who has been feeding whom' - LA Times
'Brilliant and cerebral psychological thriller' - Publishers Weekly
'There hasn't been fiction this good about a San Francisco medical professional gone off the rails over a woman since Frank Norris' deluded dentist in the 1899 novel McTeague' - San Franciso Chronicle
'A pulp masterpiece' - The Arizona Republic
