Kind Hearts and Coronets: Israel Rank

That man is fortunate who has the world against him.

Israel Rank has many advantages and qualities which should enable an ordinary man to get through life quite successfully. But he's not content to be an ordinary man. He's a distant heir to the Gascoyne earldom, and he will not rest until he inherits it, lock, stock and barrel. One tiny problem: he must kill everyone in line before him, without getting caught. The result is an evergreen classic of blackly comic crime fiction.

First published in 1907 as 'Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal', the novel is probably best known as inspiration for the classic Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets, frequently voted one of the greatest British films ever. The novel itself remains a remarkably fresh satire that reverses conventional morality - a sympathetic comedy about a serial killer.

'A superb thriller, but also a disturbing study in human nature. The narrative pace never slackens, thanks to the spareness and elegance of Horniman's prose . . . (the novel is) over all too quickly.' Simon Heffer

About the Author
Horniman, Roy: - Robert (Roy) Horniman, novelist and playwright, was born in Southsea in 1872, son of the distinguished sailor and Paymaster-in-Chief of the Royal Navy, William Horniman, and an aristocratic Greek mother. He was educated abroad, then at Southsea Grammar School, and at the age of 19 went on the stage. For a time he was tenant and manager of the Criterion Theatre, writing many original plays and adaptations of his own and others' novels. In later life he wrote and adapted for the screen, and after his death his 1907 novel Israel Rank (also known as Kind Hearts and Coronets) became the basis for the 1949 film Kind Hearts and Coronets. In World War I he served in the Artist's Rifles. As well as his professional work Roy Horniman devoted much time and energy to various causes, especially anti-vivisection for which he often spoke eloquently in public. A contemporary characterised him as 'a well-to-do bachelor who knew what did and what did not suit him, marriage being in the latter category, the social round in the former'. He died in London in 1930 at the age of 62.