HASLUCK LIBRARY

Cover notes Macmillan edition 1980:
"Dyson Garrick claims that his newly invented patent guitar is the key to an era. It represents excitement, a change of mood, a chord soon to be struck.

His friends know him as an entrepreneur, a go-getter, a man with an eye for the main chance. When he talks an inventor into selling him a share in a patent guitar, no one is surprised. As usual, Dyson seems to be flying high, and the party he throws to launch his marketing campaign builds up to an exuberant crescendo.

But there is also a sense of disharmony. An investigator arrives and begins asking questions. The tempo of the story quickens as it becomes apparent that Dyson is troubled by the shadow of an earlier deal.

Determined to promote the guitar, to honour his commitment to the inventor, Dyson struggles to raise enough finance to overcome his difficulties. Nonetheless, in spite of the confident pose he maintains in the presence of his family and his friends, Dyson becomes increasingly isolated until even he is uncertain whether he can pull through.

In this, his second novel, with extraordinary contrapuntal skill, Nicholas Hasluck gradually reveals the character of the protagonist - a business man who is both brash and vulnerable - the nuances of the dilemma in which Dyson Garrick finds himself and the complexity of the world in which he lives."