Can this be what happened to Lord Lucan after the night of 7 November 1974

James Wood’s How Fiction Works is just out. He is also the author of The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief and is a staff writer at the New Yorker.

Other articles by this contributor:

Addicted to Unpredictability · Knut Hamsun

A Long Day at the Chocolate Bar Factory · David Bezmozgis

A Frog’s Life · Coetzee’s Confessions

The Slightest Sardine · a literary dragnet

Credulity · ‘Life of Pi’

Nothing in a Really Big Way · Adam Mars-Jones

The Lie-World · D.B.C. Pierre

Puffed Wheat · How serious is John Bayley?