Book launch: A Deathly Silence by Christina Koning

A Deathly Silence begins with an occupational hazard no literary agent expects: being murdered by literature.

A succession of London agents die in apparently unrelated circumstances, until Detective Inspector Jake Kowalczyk notices that the deaths have been staged with reference to books. The clue is ingenious, but it leads him into a world in which almost everyone has a professional grievance, a private resentment, or a manuscript awaiting an answer. Kowalczyk’s literary knowledge gives him an advantage his colleagues do not always share — though even he has some way to go before he understands what connects the victims.

The resulting investigation is also a comedy of literary manners. Koning moves through agencies and publishers’ offices, launch parties, expensive lunches and literary festivals, observing the fashions, hierarchies and small hypocrisies of contemporary publishing with a dry eye. Writers want to be read; agents want books they can sell; publicists want attention; and everyone knows everyone else — or thinks they ought to.

Beneath the comedy lies a darker question about what happens to those who spend years waiting to be admitted to a world that scarcely notices them.

A Deathly Silence is both a neatly constructed police procedural and a satire on the business of books.

Christina Koning has worked as a journalist, reviewing fiction for The Times, and other national newspapers. Her first novel, A Mild Suicide, was followed by several other works of literary fiction. She won the Encore Prize in 1999 and was long-listed for the Orange Prize in the same year. In 2014, she turned to crime, with the first of her Blind Detective novels. A Deathly Silence is her seventeenth novel, and is published by Arbuthnot Books. Over the course of her long career, Christina has had five literary agents, with all of whom she was on good terms.

Come along to hear more, as Christina discusses the book with fellow author, Kate Rhodes.

The launch is free to attend but booking is essential.