In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner [antikvár]

PROLOGUE hat David King-Ryder felt inside was a kind of grief and a secondary dying. He felt overcome by a gloom and despair completely at odds with his situation. Below him on the stage of the Agincourt Theatre, Horatio was reprising Hamlet's "Divinity That Shapes Us" while Fortinbras countered with "O Proud Death." Three of the four bodies were being borne off the stage, leaving Hamlet lying in Horatio's arms. The cast—thirty strong—^were moving towards one another, Norwegian soldiers coming from stage left, Danish courtiers coming from stage right, to meet up-stage from Horatio. As they began the refrain, the music swelled and the ordnance—^which he'd initially argued against because of the risk of begging comparisons to the 1812—boomed out in the wings. And at that precise moment, the stalls began rising beneath David's box. They were followed by the dress circle. Then the balconies. And over the music, the singing, and the cannons, thundered applause. This was what he had craved for more than a decade: a complete vindication of his prodigious talent. And by God, he had it before him. He had it below him and everywhere round him as well, for that matter. Three years of mind-crushing,