‘The Collector’ was John Fowles’s brilliant first novel. It tells the story of Frederick, the strange and withdrawn ‘collector’ who, no longer content with butterflies, ‘collects’ art student Miranda - he is fixated on her - and keeps her captive in his Sussex house. Fowles’s compelling psychological study charts a battle of minds and wills which, in addition to its fascinating and terrifying account of a psychopath, lays open to display the powerful condition of attachment. ‘The Collector’ is a short, spare, direct and intelligently written thriller.