Tout ça n'est qu'un jeu - Games

Bill Pronzini

Éditions Fayard / Le Livre de Poche

1981

272 páginas

9h 4m

ISBN-13: 9782213010328

Un jeune sénateur américain décide d'aller passer secrètement un week-end sur une île déserte (avec tout le confort prévu) dont il est propriétaire. Bien entendu, il s'amène de la compagnie, une belle journaliste très libérée. En trois jours, sous la double invocation de Nietzsche et de Lewis Carroll, va s'organiser une haletante "chasse à l'homme" qui va faire passer nos deux protagonistes de la stupeur à l'horreur, de l'épouvante à la terreur la plus totale. Ils ne sont pas seuls sur l'île; des sacrifices rituels d'animaux sous l'égide de Lucifer préludent à bien d'autres cérémonies. Un thriller fantastique qui ne vous ratera pas. Roman de 1966.

GAMES - A new thriller in the tradition of Pronzini's Snowbound, "a shivery, spine- tingling it-could-happen suspense story... a real rouser." —Publishers Weekly.

The rich and powerful Jackman family had always had an obsession with successful gamesmanship—whether in the parlor, the bedroom, or in national politics. When Senator David Jackman plans an escape from Washington pressures through a long, idyllic weekend with his lover on the family's lavish island estate, he has no reason to suspect that he will leave buried there forever the man he had become.

No sooner do Jackman and Tracy arrive than the evidence begins to mount that they are not alone on the island. The threat quickly becomes dramatically real and the couple are soon running for their lives. Jackman knows the island well from his boyhood summers there and instinctively resorts to superb gamesmanship in eluding the pursuers—until Tracy is captured in a scene guaranteed to send chills up the reader's spine.

It is a deadly and terrifying "game" that then begins in earnest, full of subtle clues that are as tantalizing and challenging as they are threatening.

Trapped, exhausted, apparently doomed—truly defeated for the first time in his life—Jackman undergoes a catharsis and a revelation which change both his personality and his fate. He will play one final game, and with grim confidence he brilliantly plans and executes a turnabout on his tormentors which leads to a truly thrilling and action-packed triumph.