I grew up in an organisation much like the one I describe in the book, of which my parents were enthusiastic members. Researching the ‘alternative’ spiritual organisation – or, if you prefer, cult – was a different matter, because it meant drawing on my own childhood and adolescent experiences and grafting them on to a period before I was born. Researching all of the above was fairly straightforward: the usual truffle hunt through history books, contemporary newspapers, magazines, newsreels, novels and films. This atmosphere of confusion, doubt and fear, together with the post-war decline in adherence to established religions, provided fertile ground for a bumper crop of gurus of all shapes and sizes, as people sought for certainty in an increasingly uncertain world. At the same time, the Suez Crisis marked the end of Britain as a world power. Their mounting fear of nuclear holocaust intensified alarmingly when, in November – when the action of the book is set – the Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary. For the USA’s European allies – sitting targets in any exchange of fire – this was not reassuring. In January, John Forster Dulles had made his famous ‘brinkmanship’ speech, in which he advocated playing a nuclear weapons-based game of ‘chicken’ with the Soviets. Stratton novel in 1956, because it was a momentous year in Western politics. When a woman’s body is found, in woods nearby, Stratton initially assumes he has found her, but the reality turns out to be far stranger and more terrifying. He is rumoured to have been immaculately conceived, but the woman who is said to be his mother, and whose photograph was cherished by Lloyd, has disappeared. At the Foundation, Stratton meets Michael, a twelve-year-old boy who has been proclaimed as the next incarnation in a long line of spiritual leaders stretching back to Christ and Buddha. It seems that Lloyd had believed himself marked out for great things.
'A top-notch police procedural' Sunday Telegraph.Download chapter 1 of A Willing Victim | Buy this Book 'This book was so brilliantly written that I kept having to look up from reading to reassure myself I wasn't back there' Promoting Crime. 'Wilson herself really excels in the passages of poetic description' Independent. 'A skilful and moving tale of faith and madness, elegantly dressed up as a police procedural' Mail on Sunday. Instead it details a period that few of us would willingly return to live in but which we really ought not to ignore' Reviewing the Evidence. Some historical fiction trades in nostalgia. 'Brilliantly written and scrupulously researched. 'An intelligent, thought provoking crime novel with a particularly poignant ending' The Spectator. a subtle writer who achieves her grip on the reader by the accumulation of little gems of setting and characterization' The Times. 'Extraordinary mastery of the atmosphere, dialogue and morality of London's past. 'A Willing Victim is a complex, richly-textured novel, beautifully written' Shots Mag.
'An excellent thought-provoking read' Literary Review.