Virtue in Danger

Slipcased, lettered edition (of 26) for private distribution. Endpapers re-marqued by the Author (and signed). Silk marker. Signed to title page.

It is July 1963. At its headquarters, a former luxury hotel in the Swiss Alps, crisis is facing the Moral Regeneration Movement, a powerful modern, quasi-religious cult. Its founder and leader, Arnold Breitman is dying. Questions are already being asked about who is to succeed him.

There are a number of likely candidates. They include a former tennis champion, a Swiss industrialist, a trade unionist and a doctor. But each of them hides a guilty secret.

Into this troubled situation comes a world-weary professional actor, Ivor Smith who, quite by accident, finds himself at the very epicentre of the crisis, playing an unexpectedly influential role.

The cast of characters also includes an exiled Balkan King, his ambitious queen, his twin daughters, a gay policeman, an assassin, a gossip columnist, a Lutheran Pastor with an obsession about goats and a host of others.

Terrible secrets are revealed, uncontrollable passions are unleashed. The pace is furious. Comedy is rarely absent, but underneath runs a serious subtext. Questions about the nature of morality and the motivations of those who set themselves up as moral leaders are asked. All these elements are bound together into a terrific climax on a mountain top, followed by a joyous ending that might be described as "fairy tale" if it were not laced with mordant wit.

Anyone who knows Oliver's four volumes of stories (the last of which Madder Mysteries was published by Ex Occidente) will find here in novel form all his familiar gifts: an elegant, lucid style, acid wit and subtle humour, vivid characters, telling dramatic scenes, combined with an acute sense of moral terror and spiritual danger. In short, Oliver's sheer story telling abilities are on display in Virtue in Danger perhaps as never before.