A Season in Purgatory

by Dominick Dunne

Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

They were the family with everything. Money. Influence. Glamour. Power. The power to halt a police investigation in its tracks. The power to spin a story, concoct a lie, and believe it was the truth. The power to murder without guilt, without shame, and without ever paying the price. They were the Bradleys, America's royalty. But an outsider refuses to play his part. And now, the day of reckoning has arrived.

Praise for A Season in Purgatory

“Highly entertaining.”—Entertainment Weekly

“Stunning.”—Liz Smith

“Compelling.”—New York Daily News

“Mesmerizing.”—The New York Times

“Potent characterization and deftly crafted plotting.”—Publishers Weekly

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780345522221
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/17/2009
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	398,663
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Dominick Dunne was the author of five bestselling novels, two collections of essays, and The Way We Lived Then, a memoir with photographs.  He had been a special correspondent for Vanity Fair for twenty-five years, and the host of the television series Dominick Dunne's Power, Privilege, and Justice. He passed away in 2009 after completing Too Much Money.

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Excerpted from "A Season in Purgatory"
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Copyright © 2009 Dominick Dunne.
Excerpted by permission of Random House Publishing Group.
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Editorial Reviews

"Highly entertaining."—Entertainment Weekly
 
"Mesmerizing."—New York Times

"Stunning."—Liz Smith
 
"Compelling."—New York Daily News
 
"Potent characterization and deftly crafted plotting."—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

Dunne's juicy tale of an aristocratic family's secret complicity in a grisly murder was a four-week PW bestseller. (July)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

YA-The Bradleys are a large, rich, powerful, Irish-Catholic family, headed by a ruthless patriarch who is bent on having his favorite son, Constant, become president. Mrs. Bradley is a religious, designer-clad mother who shuts her eyes to her husband's numerous affairs. Harrison Burns is Constant's poor but bright friend. They attend the same exclusive prep school. One night, Constant beats a young girl to death, and Harrison helps him cover it up. Twenty-two years later, he can't bear the guilt of his complicity in the crime and decides to confess. Can he bring the Bradley dynasty down with him? Dunne, who has previously paralleled real life in The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (Crown, 1985), has written a real page-turner that looks into the lives of a wealthy, morally corrupt American family. It's almost like reading People magazine.-Diana C. Hirsch, Prince George's County Memorial Library System, MD

School Library Journal

It's Kennedy-bashing time again, as rich-and-venal chronicler Dunne (An Inconvenient Woman, etc.) drags writer-hero Harrison Burns through 20 years of guilt for having helped our most prominent Irish Catholic family cover up a sex murder by its fair-haired scion. After a brief peek ahead—naughty talk, dirty pictures, and several murders are all mentioned in the first four pages—it's 1972, and Harrison is mysteriously infatuated with prep-school chum Constant Bradley, a plausible cipher who can get aroused only when he's beating up his dates. When Constant's unwanted attentions to Winifred Utley leave her dead on the family estate, Harrison reluctantly helps cover up his guilt, allowing himself to be bought off ("My soul was lost, but my future was bought and paid for") by Constant's wealthy, ruthless father Gerald (no slouch at covering up his own sex crimes) with the connivance of Constant's slimy, crippled brother Jerry. (Hovering piously on the fringes: Constant's impossibly devout mother Grace, his successful brothers Desmond and Sandro, and his sisters Maureen and Mary Pat, who never mention their retarded, institutionalized sister Agnes.) Then it's 1989, and Harrison, visiting a Maine nursing home to cover one of his true-crime expos‚s, runs into Constant's sister Kitt, visiting crazy Agnes, immediately starts a torrid affair with Kitt, and allows himself to be lured back into the Bradley orbit by the offer to ghostwrite a saccharine family bio to launch Constant's gubernatorial bid. When old man Bradley, trying to take uncooperative Harrison out of the picture for good, overreaches himself, Harrison decides to unload his secret and go after Constant. So in 1993,Harrison looks back over the long-delayed trial—and its inevitable outcome. Dunne may see himself as another F. Scott Fitzgerald, chronicling the moral corruption of the well-to-do (references to Gatsby passim). But the main pleasures here involve nothing more moving than watching a wily old pro set up characters with as much individuality as ninepins preparatory to bowling them down. (Literary Guild Selection for Summer)

Kirkus Reviews