"This masterful portrayal of a lion in winter--an 82-year-old former leader of France who has a secret that could take down the government--has been unavailable for over forty years, but is nonetheless one of the great writer's most deeply layered tales of psychological suspense. Set at the never-named Premier's seat of suspicious retirement--a remote hideaway on the stormy coast of Normandy--it tells the tale of a once powerful manipulator of people slowly realizing that he has been manipulated himself."--Page 4 of cover.