Blueeyedboy
blueeyedboy
JOANNE HARRIS
LONDON • TORONTO • SYDNEY • AUCKLAND • JOHANNESBURG
Contents
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781407056289
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Doubleday an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Frogspawn Ltd 2010
The extract from ‘Buffalo Bill’ is reprinted from
Complete Poems 1904–1962
by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage, by permission of W. W. Norton & Company. Copyright © 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust and George James Firmage. Voltaire lyrics reproduced by kind permission of the artist. ‘I Will Kill Again’ by Jarvis Cocker copyright © Warner/Chappell Music Publishing Ltd 2006, all rights reserved. ‘Sugar Baby Love’ by Wayne Bickerton and Tony Waddington copyright © W. B. Music Corp. and Budde Music Inc, all rights reserved.
Joanne Harris has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBNs 9780385609500 (hb) 9780385609517 (tpb)
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2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
To Kevin,
who also has blue eyes.
Joanne Harris
is the author of the Whitbread-shortlisted
Chocolat
(made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp) and seven other best-selling novels: the latest is
The Lollipop Shoes
. Her hobbies are listed in
Who’s Who
as ‘mooching, lounging, strutting, strumming, priest-baiting and quiet subversion’. She plays bass guitar in a band first formed when she was sixteen, is currently studying Old Norse, and lives with her husband and daughter in Yorkshire, about fifteen miles from the place where she was born.
Also by Joanne Harris
THE EVIL SEED
SLEEP, PALE SISTER
CHOCOLAT
BLACKBERRY WINE
FIVE QUARTERS OF THE ORANGE
COASTLINERS
HOLY FOOLS
JIGS & REELS
GENTLEMEN & PLAYERS
THE LOLLIPOP SHOES
With Fran Warde
THE FRENCH KITCHEN: A COOKBOOK
THE FRENCH MARKET: MORE RECIPES FROM
A FRENCH KITCHEN
For more information on Joanne Harris and her books,
see her website at
www.joanne-harris.co.uk
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Some books are easy to write. Some are rather more difficult. And some books are just like Rubik’s cubes, with no apparent solution in sight. This particular Rubik’s cube would never have been solved without the help of my editor, Marianne Velmans, and my agent, Peter Robinson, who encouraged me to persevere. Thanks, too, to my PA, Anne Riley; to publicist Louise Page-Lund; to Mr Fry for the loan of Patch; to copy-editor Lucy Pinney; to Claire Ward and Jeff Cottenden for the cover art; to Francesca Liversidge; Manpreet Grewal; Sam Copeland; Kate Tolley; Jane Villiers; Michael Carlisle; Mark Richards; Voltaire; Jennifer and Penny Luithlen. Thanks, too, to the unsung heroes: the proofreaders; sales executives; book reps and booksellers who are so often forgotten when it comes to handing out the laurels. Special thanks to my friends in fic and fandom, especially to: gl-12; ashlibrooke; spicedogs; mr_henry_gale; marzella; jade_melody; henry_holland; divka; benobsessed. And, of course, to the man in Apartment 7, whose voice was in my mind from the start.
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death
e e cummings, ‘Buffalo Bill’
PART ONE
blue
Once there was a widow with three sons, and their names were Black, Brown and Blue. Black was the eldest, moody and aggressive. Brown was the middle child, timid and dull. But Blue was his mother’s favourite. And he was a murderer.
1
You are viewing the webjournal of
blueeyedboy
posting on:
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Posted at
:
02.56 on Monday, January 28
Status
:
public
Mood
:
nostalgic
Listening to
:
Captain Beefheart:
‘Ice Cream For Crow’
The colour of murder is blue, he thinks. Ice-blue, smokescreen blue, frostbite, post-mortem, body-bag blue. It is also
his
colour in so many ways, running through his circuitry like an electrical charge, screaming blue murder all the way.
Blue colours everything. He sees it, senses it everywhere, from the blue of his computer screen to the blue of the veins on the backs of her hands, raised now and twisted like the tracks of sandworms on Blackpool beach – where they used to go, the four of them, every year on his birthday, and he would have an ice-cream cone, and paddle in the sea, and search out the little scuttling crabs from under the piles of seaweed, and drop them into his bucket to die in the heat of the simmering birthday sun.