Dead Babies is Martin Amis's second novel, published in 1975 by Jonathan Cape. Its first UK and US paperback edition was published under the title Dark Secrets.Amazon Amis's second novel—a parody of Agatha Christie's country-house mysteriesThomas Jones, "Short Cuts", London Review of Books, 16 November 2000—takes place over a single weekend at a manor called Appleseed Rectory. In 2000, the book was adapted into a film of the same name, starring Paul Bettany and Olivia Williams. In 2001, BBC critic David Wood wrote "Amis's second novel ranks among his most incendiary with its mordant wit, black comedy, and sense of the violently absurd."David Wood, "Dead Babies", BBC, 22 January 2001 It has an epigraph attributed to the Cynic Menippus and the novel has been interpreted as a Menippean satire.Stolarek, Joanna (2011). "Narrative and Narrated Homicide": The Vision of Contemporary Civilisation in Martin Amis's Postmodern Detective Fiction (PDF) (PhD thesis). University of Silesia. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
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