In the absence of Mrs. Petersen...

by Nigel Balchin

Sarah was pretty average hell, but she was also the best and most generous girl in bed that Jim Peterson had ever known... and now she was dead.

To escape her memory Jim flies to Paris - only to meet Katherine who is the living image of Sarah...

An image that made Jim agree to an audacious deception...

But in Belgrade the innocent masquerade becomes a nightmare reality of cross and double-cross...

Genres: Fiction, Thriller

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Trained originally as an industrial psychologist, in which capacity he helped Rowntree’s to successfully launch Black Magic chocolates in 1933, Nigel Balchin first received critical acclaim as a novelist during the Second World War when he wrote Darkness Falls From the Air. It was the first of three evocative novels (including the smash-hit The Small Back Room) that made good use of his wartime employment experiences at the Ministry of Food and later in the army. This trio was followed by a stream of other fine novels, such as A Sort of Traitors, Sundry Creditors and The Fall of the Sparrow. Balchin diversified into film scriptwriting after the war, winning a BAFTA for his work on The Man Who Never Was and penning what he whimsically described as “the first folio edition of Cleopatra”, being his original (unused) script for the Richard Burton/Elizabeth Taylor epic. When Balchin died in 1970, at the age of 61, the Guardian anointed him “the novelist of men at work”, a fitting epithet for one of the best fiction writers of the twentieth century.

Reviews

[CQM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eminently readable as is any Balchin novel but a little confused between thriller and treatise on grief.
It all begins when the protagonist's wife is killed in an aeroplane crash and he shortly after meets a woman bearing an uncanny resemblance to her. So uncanny she can use the dead wife's passport!
The descriptions of grief are heartbreaking but in a typically understated way. The thriller elements of the book are perfectly serviceable but the two sides never quite come together as perfectly as you would want.

[Dark-Draco · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was quite surprised at how much I enjoyed this book - I wouldn't have chosen it myself, but having it fall upon me meant I had to give it a go. When Jim Petersen witnesses the plane crash that kills his wife, he is thrown into a deep despair and runs off to Paris to get away from her memory. There, he meets Katerina, a woman that bears a striking resemblance to Sarah. When he mentions the similarity, Katerina asks him to take her to Yugoslavia, pretending that she is his wife, in order to recover a family fortune hidden there. With nothing else to do, he agrees, and they set off. But Katerina is keeping secrets and Jim could be the victim of her schemes.

Really funny in places and a definate sense of humour throughout. There is no way this story would work in the modern age, with all the security and ID we have to have now, but it does work in its own timeframe. It is obvious from the start that Jim is a bit of a dupe, but I love the way that it ends and how he gets himself out of it all. I would really recommend giving this a go.

[Bill Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a pleasure to read something so well written and delivered with perfect pace. Not exactly a crime novel, nor a thriller but an entertaining romp with a strong sense of the world in the 1960s from Hollywood to Belgrade, from the movies to Tito's Yugoslavia. Carefully mixing a brew of the shifting morality of the decade against the old world order, Balchin pulls off some surprising tricks to create a compelling page turner. Just don't expect anything that resembles the 21st century thriller or crime book, it is of it era, but nonetheless better for it. Great to come across an almost forgotten writer and wonder why they are not better known.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Secondhand bookshop gamble. Enjoyed the process of reading it; not really my kind of book.

[Roger Boyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up at random in a holiday let and got so engrossed I brought it home. I'd never heard of it or its author before.

It's a great "spy romp", but it's very well written and has real plausibility. I was with it to the end and will seek out more of his books.

I particularly like the way its set in 1966 - the period is captured very well.

Yeah, very good. But a page-turner rather than literature.

[Tom Newth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Typical strangulation of emotional potentiality, but finely readable as ever, with a fun plot that is kicked off in well startling fashion.

[Richard Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Innocent and mild by today's supposedly realistic and sophisticated gritty standards but I know of no modern thriller that is so well written.