TJ J. (CraftyTJ) reviewed on 2/18/2007 + 381 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 1

British first novel is a historical thriller in the vein of Caleb Carr and Iain Pears, with maximum melodramatic coloring. All the characters, including the protagonist, Jonathan Absey, a civil servant whose daughter has been strangled by what seems to be a serial killer in late 18th-century London, are deeply flawed, and part of the problem with the book is that it is so unremittingly downbeat, with no glimmer of hope that anything will improve for its large cast. As the French Revolution is entering its second phase and its supporters are hoping to beat off an invading Royalist army backed by Britain, London has never seemed more dank and corrupt. Even the little group of French exiles and their hangers-on who are the heart of the story are mostly rotten to the core: the beautiful comtesse, Auguste; her half-mad and terminally ill brother, who may be the murderer; their hulking brute of a coachman; the enigmatic Dr. Raultier; and Auguste's handsome but apparently mute English lover. Then there is Jonathan's half-brother, amateur astronomer Alexander, a gay man at a time when it was desperately dangerous to be so, who is enlisted in the search for a then-unknown ninth planet by the glamorous French group. All this ties up with who is killing red-headed girls and robbing their corpses, and ends leaving only two principals alive, and them barely.

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