title: An Absolute Gentleman: A Novel
author:  R. M. Kinder 
description: You may never look quite the same way at that punctilious little man down the street after reading this chilling first novel from Kinder, author of two well-received short story collections (<I>A Near-Perfect Gift</I> and <I>Sweet Angel Band</I>). Inspired by her own brush with a serial killer&mdash;back in the late '80s her neighbor Robert Weeks was sentenced to life in prison for two murders and suspected of more&mdash;Kinder deftly limns the deadly odyssey of Arthur Blume, a middle-aged creative writing professor who manages to be both the most ordinary and the most monstrous of creatures. The well-paced action cuts between Blume's Missouri present and horrific past in Georgia as the child of a psychotic teenage mother (which forms his view of treachery as the natural order and women as innately deceptive). Along the way, his slyly dropped clues&mdash;or are they red herrings?&mdash;add to the intrigue. Though one wishes that Kinder had gone lighter on some of the Southern-fried Freud, this artfully told tale of psychological suspense is as gripping as the spider webs Blume is so fond of studying. <I>(Oct.)</I> <BR>Copyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: **The Secret Love of a Gentleman**
  
  JANE LARK
  
  ![](Images/image00287.jpeg)
  
  A division of HarperCollins _Publishers_
  
  [www.harpercollins.co.uk](http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
  
  Harper _Impulse_ an imprint of
  
  HarperCollins _Publishers_
  
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  London SE1 9GF
  
  [www.harpercollins.co.uk](http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
  
  First published in Great Britain by Harper _Impulse_ 2015
  
  Copyright © Jane Lark 2015
  
  Cover images © Shutterstock.com
  
  Cover layout design © HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd 2015
  
  Cover design by Zoe Jackson
  
  Jane Lark asserts the moral right
  
  to be identified as the author of this work.
  
  A catalogue record for this book is
  
  available from the British Library
  
  This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
  
  The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are
  
  the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to
  
  actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is
  
  entirely coincidental.
  
  All rights reserved under International
  
  and Pan-American Copyrig