Durrell - Balthazar: Alexandria Quartet II

The politics of love, the intrigues of desire love and murder, moved obscurely in the dark corners of Alexandria's streets and squares, brothels and drawing-rooms moved like a great congress of eels in the slime of plot and counter-plot in Balthazar, the second volume in Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, the story and the characters come more clearly into focus. Darley, the reflective Englishman, receives from Balthazar, the pathologist, a mass of notes which attempt to explain what really happened between the tempestuous Justine, her a husband Nessim, Clea the artist, Pursewarden the writer; new figures emerge and play key roles. Balthazar, in his Interlinear, explains and warns.