The first of three loosely-related novels written by John O'Loughlin in 1980 and dealing with art and artists, 'Thwarted Ambitions' is the tragic and, in a sense, pathetic account of a young artist by name of Robert Harding who is so obsessed with advancing his career ... that he becomes blind to the sexual machinations of Henry Grace, a wealthy and influential art critic, to seduce him whilst ostensibly posing as his admiring patron. For Henry Grace seems to be just the answer to Harding's professional ambitions, and the artist allows himself to be led from commission to commission by the older man without the slightest suspicion of what the latter is really up to. But it is Carol, Robert's modelling girlfriend, whose suspicions are first aroused and, together with both the writer Andrew Doyle, who is Harding's next-door neighbour, and an eccentric professional acquaintance of hers by name of Donald Prescott, she plots to thwart Grace's sexual ambitions - with tragic consequences for the critic, as things turn out in this far from implausible narrative