Face on the Cutting-Room Floor

With an introduction by Jonathan Coe1930s King's Cross, London.When aspiring film actress Estella Lamare is found dead on the cutting-room floor of a London film studio, Cameron McCabe finds himself at the centre of a police investigation. There are multiple suspects, multiple confessors and, as more people around him die, McCabe begins to perform his own amateur sleuth-work, followed doggedly by the mysterious Inspector Smith.But then, abruptly, McCabe's account ends . . .Who is Cameron McCabe? Is he victim? Murderer? Novelist? Joker?And if not McCabe, who is the author of The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor?

The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor is a weird, funny, perverse exercise in literary messing-about. It's a murder mystery that pulls the rug from under the reader, then pulls the floor from under the rug, then questions whether the floor was even there. It's a great, and baffling, experience, and the less you know about it beforehand, the better., A dazzling . . . unrepeatable box of tricks . . . The detective story to end all detective stories

Though The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor was first published in 1937, the true identity of its author remained a mystery until 1974 when it was discovered that the well-known German sexologist, jazz musician and critic Ernest Borneman was 'Cameron McCabe'. Borneman died in 1995.