SOURCE: “Botni for All,” in Times Literary Supplement, June 15, 1990, p. 653.

In the following review of Visiting Cards, Fitton praises the novel, despite his questions about its unlikely premise.

Visiting Cards, a jocose novel about the conference procedures of a World Association of Authors (WAA), by a former world president of PEN, contains much salutary sending-up of the scheming (and screwing) that seems to accompany worthy international gatherings. The donnée may appear all too familiar; the writers’ conference novel, or memoir, may even be a symptom of writer's block. In the practised hands of Francis King, however, some liveliness is imparted to well-worn themes and a pleasant enough tale emerges from rather unpromising material.

Amos Kingsley, a minor travel writer more deserving of the Royal Literary Fund than the Order of the British Empire, finds himself, in his mid-forties, nominated for high office in the international writers’ guild...