Revenge

At the beginning of the novel, Lord Parker's mistress of five years finally realizes that Parker's promise that she would become Lady Parker and bear his children was a lie. She is beside herself with rage, so she leaks documents to Strike proving that Lord Parker has been guilty of tax evasion on a grand scale. She got the documents from Lord Parker's PA, who was also shagging Lord Parker's mistress. Strike sells the story to Dominic Culpepper, but Strike insists that Culpepper has to leave his client out of the story because she would undoubtedly damage herself "[i]n her savage desire for retribution ..." Strike describes her as a "shaking, besotted, bitterly betrayed woman" (5).

Elizabeth Tassel tells Strike, "I met Michael ... in a tutorial group studying Jacobean revenge tragedies. Let's just say it was his natural milieu. He adores those writers; their sadism and their...