Stunning

"Lord of Illusions" is the story of the genesis of a crime.
In a short preamble, the story (written in the first person singular) announces color, that of the murder of a young man, Bunny, performed by a handful of friends to him. The perfect murder, falling into a ravine at the bottom of the mountain.

The story takes place while slow, with a care for details, a consummate art of everyday life and vibrant characters, extraordinarily alive, who have regularly reminded the style of Victoria Clayton. (With however less heat and humor - the dramatic context will not let go of a page reader).

I can imagine that some readers can judge this slow and boring book. Personally I found it simply fascinating: exciting, incomparable reading fluency. That's a long time since I had not read a book with such abandon.

The story of the bottom frame is a university with a lot of young people abusing alcohol, tobacco and various drugs while pursuing their studies despite everything seriously. The narrator, Richard, is a sad boy, bleak, from a poor and ill-loving family. He landed at Hampden by chance; coincidentally also admitted he finds himself among the very few students of a charismatic old man, Julian, who teaches Greek, in privacy, discouraging students, handpicked to continue studying all other material.

This little coterie is evolving on the margins of other students, with all the appearance of a feeling of superiority that makes mask instead a certain indifference to others.
There Henry, a dark young man, reserved and bright, whose conduct seems that of an older man, not even age.
There Francis, effeminate, nervous, excessive and expansive.
There are also twins, Charles and Camilla, tall, handsome, blond and peaceful.
There Richard, erased, a little cold, complexed by his family origins.
And then there was Bunny, extrovert, unceremonious, big mouth, freeloading by education, unbearable but charming too.

The story thus started, and tells us the first encounters, the birth of friendship, of complicity. Classes, outings, binge drinking (permanent, the characters are drunk most of the time). Little by little we understand the links between these young people a little atypical; but only a little, nothing seems to predispose them to murder in cold blood. Yet a plot unseals gradually, almost a mistake, which degenerates.
A dramatic error that is festering and which by a combination of circumstances to which all attend with impotence, finally pushes these young smart people, raised, correct, to orchestrate the perfect crime.

Understanding the why occurs early enough, a third of the book, and execution of the murder at the half. The rest of the story is devoted to the descent into hell. Crime does not pay.

The most admirable of this book, rich literary qualities (a well-told story) is in the evolution of the characters. The author masters the subject perfectly, brilliantly manipulating the reader, making him feel subtly changing feelings.
It is common to put a little time to get an idea of ​​the personality of a character in a play. But I had never changed his mind and, going from one extreme to another, as and when the figures available to me in understanding, layer by layer, like slowly peeled onions.

Of double bluff bluff, the smoke screen is slow to dissipate.