The Face Thief
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
Margot is a grifter, making her living preying on the weaknesses of men. She is an avenging angel, shattering marriages and draining bank accounts.
Exploring what drives her quest to deceive and disarm, The Face Thief moves fluidly forward and back in time, drawing vivid portraits of Margot's rocky childhood and her adult victims: an amiable, newly married man enticed into a catastrophic fraud; an esteemed teacher outwitted by his most dangerous student; and a well-meaning New York City cop tripped up by his belief in redemption.
Rich in suspense and psychological depth, The Face Thief swirls around predator and prey, creating a landscape where the educated are violent, the beautiful ugly, and the well-intentioned hapless, though all are constantly attempting to right their toppled lives.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the start of Gottlieb's third novel, a taut psychological thriller, an unnamed woman, later identified as Margot Lassiter, sustains grievous injuries as she tumbles down a long flight of stairs. Flashbacks reveal the enigmatic and charismatic Margot, before her near fatal fall, as a consummate schemer. Soon after Margot hired Lawrence Billings, a self-professed expert at reading body language, to give her private instruction, she tried to seduce him. Also, under an alias, Margot enticed 42-year-old John Potash, who spent most of his career as the vice principal of a small alternative Manhattan high school, to invest much of his family's fortune in a fraudulent financial firm. Meanwhile, in the present, police detective Dan France takes a deep interest in Margot's well-being as she recovers in the hospital. Not just a gifted storyteller, Gottlieb (Now You See Him) provocatively explores human relationships and the lies we tell ourselves and each other.