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The Ballad of Peckham Rye

By: Muriel Spark
Narrated by: Nadia May
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Publisher's Summary

The Ballad of Peckham Rye is the wickedly farcical fable of a blue-collar town turned upside down.

When the firm of Meadows, Meade & Grindley hires Dougal Douglas (a.k.a. Douglas Dougal) to do "human research" into the private lives of its workforce, they are in no way prepared for the mayhem, mutiny, and murder he will stir up. In fact, this Music Man of the thoroughly modern corporation changes the lives of all the eccentric characters he meets, from Miss Merle Coverdale, head of the typing pool, to V.R. Druce, unsuspecting Managing Director.

This is Dame Muriel Spark at her most devilishly piquant.

©1960 Muriel Spark (P)1996 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic Reviews

"We are never out of touch, in a Spark novel, with the happiness of creation; the sudden willful largesse of magic and wit, the cunning tautness of suspense." (John Updike, The New Yorker)
"Not only funny but startlingly original, the legendary character of Dougal Douglas....may not have been boasting when he referred so blithely to his association with the devil." ( Washington Post)

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