''Dirty Weekend'' (

1991 File:1991 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Boris Yeltsin, elected as Russia's first president, waves the new flag of Russia after the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, orchestrated by Soviet hardliners; Mount Pinatubo erupts in the Phi ...

) is a novel by Helen Zahavi, adapted into a film two years later by Zahavi and director

Michael Winner Robert Michael Winner (30 October 1935 – 21 January 2013) was a British filmmaker, writer, and media personality. He is known for directing numerous action, thriller, and black comedy films in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, including several c ...

. In the US it was first published under the title ''The Weekend''; some editions are subtitled "A Novel of Revenge".

Plot introduction

Overturning the traditional notion of a pleasurable sex-filled dirty weekend, Zahavi's novel instead examines a weekend killing spree committed by Bella, a twenty-something former sex-worker. She is targeted by men who sexually abuse women, but kills them instead of letting them victimize her. Over the course of the weekend she murders seven men through a variety of gruesome methods. In the end she escapes to a new life in the large, faceless city of

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. In the novel the old

picaresque The picaresque novel ( Spanish: ''picaresca'', from ''pícaro'', for "rogue" or "rascal") is a genre of prose fiction. It depicts the adventures of a roguish, but "appealing hero", usually of low social class, who lives by his wits in a corru ...

tradition is revived: there is one central character, Bella, the ''picara'', who is the only link to all the other characters. She meets and confronts one man after the other, kills him, and moves on to the next.

Plot summary

Bella, a solitary young woman with a dubious past, has just arrived in Brighton. Having recently been dumped by her "boyfriend", all she wants is some peace and quiet in her newly rented small flat near Brunswick Square. Tim, a young man living in one of the houses across her backyard, takes a fancy to the new arrival and soon starts watching and eventually molesting her. He accosts her in the park and torments her with

obscene phone call An obscene phone call is an unsolicited telephone call where a person uses foul or sexual language to interact with someone who may be known to them or who may be a complete stranger. Making obscene telephone calls for sexual arousal or other sex ...

s. The police are not really helpful, but Bella is scared. On a stroll through the Lanes, she sees a sign advertising sessions with a

clairvoyant Clairvoyance (; ) is the magical ability to gain information about an object, person, location, or physical event through extrasensory perception. Any person who is claimed to have such ability is said to be a clairvoyant () ("one who sees cl ...

and, on the spur of the moment, she visits him. Her meeting with Nimrod serves as both an eye-opener and a

catalyst Catalysis () is the process of increasing the rate of a chemical reaction by adding a substance known as a catalyst (). Catalysts are not consumed in the reaction and remain unchanged after it. If the reaction is rapid and the catalyst recyc ...

. When Bella leaves Nimrod that Friday afternoon, her self-confidence has been restored, her mind is set, and she is ready for action: She has "had enough". A few hours later Tim makes his last obscene phone call to Bella. At night she enters his flat through a window and batters the sleeping man's head with a hammer. On Saturday morning she goes to a gunshop, but all they are prepared to sell her is an

airgun An air gun or airgun is a gun that fires projectiles pneumatically with compressed air or other gases that are mechanically pressurized ''without'' involving any chemical reactions, in contrast to a firearm, which pressurizes gases ''chem ...

. When she leaves the shop she is followed by "Mr Brown", who does sell her an illegal weapon. On Saturday night, dressed to kill, she enters the lobby of one of the large seafront hotels and only has to wait for a few minutes until she is chatted up. Her unsuspecting victim is Norman, a clinical psychologist with a weight problem. Norman, who is attending a congress in Brighton, can easily persuade her to join him upstairs in his hotel room. Once there, he cannot get an erection, and overcompensates by beating Bella over the head with a shoe until one of her teeth breaks. Afterwards, he demands that Bella let him be her "slave". Bella takes the opportunity and, while Norman is bound and gagged, kills him by putting a plastic bag over his head. On Sunday morning she finds a dentist who is willing to treat her tooth. After he has fixed her tooth, the dentist offers to give her a lift home. Instead, he drives into an empty multi-storey car park and forces Bella to perform oral sex on him. As a result, Bella kills him with his own Mercedes CE car. She steals the vehicle and soon afterwards comes to the rescue of an old tramp called "''Liverpool Mary''" who is biding her time in a cul-de-sac near Brighton station. She shoots three

yuppie Yuppie, short for "young urban professional" or "young upwardly-mobile professional", is a term coined in the early 1980s for a young professional person working in a city. The term is first attested in 1980, when it was used as a fairly neu ...

-style young men who, drunk and angry, are threatening to set fire to the bag lady. On the same night, at 4 a.m., while walking along the beach near the deserted West Pier, she realizes that she is being watched. The man watching her, a

serial killer A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons,A * * * * with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three ...

, thinks he has found his next victim, but when he attacks Bella she stabs him with a flick-knife in the leg.

External links

Helen Zahavi official website

Interview with Alex Kershaw
- ''Tribune Magazine''

- Andrew Jeffcoat, Lancaster University/Crimeculture.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Dirty Weekend (Novel) 1991 British novels British crime novels Feminist novels British satirical novels British novels adapted into films Picaresque novels Novels set in Brighton Novels about serial killers Macmillan Publishers books

Plot introduction

Plot summary

See also

External links