Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse the Charmer

Ernest Ralph Gorse, devious hero of Hamilton’s acclaimed The West Pier, turns up one cold January night in the saloon bar of The Friar, Reading. There Mrs. Plumleigh-Bruce, archetypal colonel’s widow and the worst sort of dog-owner, is holding court. She has already attracted the more or less serious attentions of Mr. Stimpson (local estate agent and subterranean lecher) and Major Parry (something of a poet since his retirement). To Gorse, undisturbed by her rabbity-toothed charms, she represents simply an ideal opportunity to exercise his perverse and vicious genius...

“Uniquely individual... a master. He is the novelist of innocence, appallingly vulnerable, and of malevolence, coming out of some mysterious darkness of evil.” ~ J.B. Priestly 

“A hypnotic writer.” ~ Time Out (

Author: Patrick Hamilton

Publisher: Penguin

Released Date: 1987

ISBN: 9780140102932