★ 07/18/2016
Price’s elegantly written, vividly evoked second novel (after Into That Darkness) marries historical suspense with literary sophistication. In 1885 London, a woman’s dismembered body is identified as that of Charlotte Reckitt, a longtime grifter for whom two very different men are searching. William Pinkerton, the 39-year-old son of American detective-agency-founder Allan Pinkerton, is struggling to accept his larger-than-life father’s recent death. Along with the agency, he has inherited the elder Pinkerton’s obsession with Edward Shade, an elusive master criminal his father could never apprehend. Having received a letter from Reckitt requesting his help, thief and confidence man Adam Foole hopes to reunite with Charlotte, the lover he lost 10 years before but hasn’t forgotten. Both men are obsessed with getting to the bottom of Charlotte’s apparent demise: Pinkerton because he believed she could lead him to Shade, Foole because he harbored tender longings for her. As the two circle each other, each probes his own past and both realize they are more similar, and more closely connected, than they believed. With its intricate cat-and-mouse game, array of idiosyncratic characters, and brooding atmosphere, By Gaslight has much to please fans of both classic suspense and Victorian fiction. Yet Price’s novel is entirely contemporary, and assuredly his own: a sweeping tale of hunter and hunted in which the most-dangerous pursuer is always the human heart. (Oct.)
By Gaslight: A Novel
Narrated by John Lee
Steven PriceUnabridged — 23 hours, 40 minutes
By Gaslight: A Novel
Narrated by John Lee
Steven PriceUnabridged — 23 hours, 40 minutes
Audiobook (Digital)
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Overview
A literary tour de force of a detective's ceaseless hunt for an elusive criminal
By Gaslight is a deeply atmospheric, haunting novel about the unending quest that has shaped a man's life.
William Pinkerton is already famous, the son of the most notorious detective of all time, when he descends into the underworld of Victorian London in pursuit of a new lead on the fabled con Edward Shade. William's father died without ever finding Shade, but William is determined to drag the thief out of the shadows.
Adam Foole is a gentleman without a past, haunted by a love affair ten years gone. When he receives a letter from his lost beloved, he returns to London to find her. What he learns of her fate, and its connection to the man known as Shade, will force him to confront a grief he thought long-buried.
A fog-enshrouded hunt through sewers, opium dens, drawing rooms, and séance halls ensues, creating the most unlikely of bonds: between Pinkerton, the great detective, and Foole, the one man who may hold the key to finding Edward Shade.
Steven Price's dazzling, riveting By Gaslight moves from the diamond mines of South Africa to the battlefields of the Civil War, on a journey into a cityscape of grief, trust, and its breaking, where what we share can bind us even against our darker selves.
Editorial Reviews
"By Gaslight can be seen as Arthur Conan Doyle by way of Dickens by way of Faulkner . . . Intense, London-centric, threaded through with a melancholy brilliance, it is an extravagant novel that takes inspiration from the classics and yet remains wholly itself." —Jean Zimmerman, NPR.org
The immersive grandeur and gravity of Price’s (Into That Darkness) sophomore novel might answer the literary cognoscenti question: “Where are today’s Dickenses, Radcliffes, and Twains?” . . . Price’s naturalism is unsentimental, adding verisimilitude to a book already thrumming with emotional and psychological realism." —Library Journal
“By Gaslight is Steven Price's extraordinary historical novel, finely written and deeply researched, about the period just following the Civil War, the son of America's most famous detective (Allen Pinkerton), and a cast of truly powerful characters, half-mad and all dangerous.” —Alan Furst, author of Night Soldiers
"Steven Price has done a daring thing: taken a long look at a complex, utterly fascinating 19th-century crime. Price's gift for unraveling a terrific yarn shines through. Give this book a try." —Caleb Carr, author of The Alienist
“This sweeping tale of the unforgettable William Pinkerton and Adam Foole thrusts the reader into smoky Victorian London with all its grit and glitter. Uniting the literary grace and depth of William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy with the intrigue and momentum of a Sherlock Holmes story, ByGaslight is completely absorbing—an epic, brilliantly written novel to rank with the world’s best.” —Jacqueline Baker, author of The Broken Hours
“This darkly mesmerizing tale is worthy of the great Victorian thriller writers, but Steven Price brings to his prose a sensibility and dazzling skill all his own. The gruesome, eerie events that unfold during the search for Charlotte Reckitt are given enthralling life in a book that is perfectly grounded in period and rich in incident and image. Haunting and deeply satisfying.”—Marina Endicott, author of Close to Hugh
“A poetic, persuasive pea-souper. Think Dickens with Maigret’s whiskers.” —Anakana Schofield, author of Martin John
“A dark tale of love, betrayal and murder that reaches from the slums of Victorian London to the diamond mines in South Africa, to the American Civil War and back. Superb storytelling.” —Kurt Palka, author of the Piano Maker
★ 10/15/2016
The immersive grandeur and gravity of Price's (Into That Darkness) sophomore novel might answer the literary cognoscenti question: "Where are today's Dickenses, Radcliffes, and Twains?" The prismatic narrative chronicles the life of William Pinkerton—one of the first private detectives—called by Scotland Yard to Victorian London to track con artist Edward Shade. With a mercurial persona and a relentless brilliance that eluded his father, Alan, founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, Pinkerton is also the equal to Shade's violence and cunning. Concurrent with the detective's arrival, Adam Foole and pre-teen Molly ship to London after a missive from Foole's lost love, Charlotte Reckitt, but learn the woman was gruesomely murdered—or was she? Powered by an enigmatic connection among the Pinkertons, Shade, Foole (who might know Shade's true identity), Reckitt, and her jailed father, the story moves from the U.S. Civil War to South Africa's diamond mines, from the American West to foggy London's excrement-reeking streets. Price's naturalism is unsentimental, adding verisimilitude to a book already thrumming with emotional and psychological realism. VERDICT The author's blend of quest, grief, betrayal, and the mysteries of identity will appeal to readers of literary crime fiction. [See Prepub Alert, 4/25/16; library marketing.]—William Grabowski, McMechen, WV
Sometimes a narrator can make a good book even better, while other times he or she can salvage a not-so-good book. John Lee does both here. The story, set in the nineteenth century, shifts farther back in time occasionally as two men—a detective and a con man—seek the whereabouts of a young woman. Each has a different motive for finding her. Lee handles every voice with aplomb, including various English accents. Characters include a wise black woman, streetwise commoners, and members of the upper class. Lee is the main reason listeners will stick with this lengthy audiobook. Through his consistent, authentic-sounding voices, his entertaining narration carries the story. M.B. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
2016-07-05
Canadian poet Price turns to fiction with this lively visitation to the foggy streets of Victorian Blighty.“Water in the cracks, water shimmering like mercury at the edges of the light-fall. There were streaks of black moss growing on the walls where moisture trickled.” Atmospheric: that just begins to describe this overstuffed, long, but swiftly paced novel, which works from a promising premise, in which the already famed private detective William Pinkerton, late of the Civil War and capable of striking fear in the heart of every wrongdoer in America, finds himself in London on the trail of a slippery con man with the suggestive name of Edward Shade. Shade’s more than just a bilko; the tentacles of his criminal enterprise extend everywhere, and somehow they’ve wrapped themselves around a woman with “small sharp teeth, long white fingers, a voice low and vicious and lovely.” Charlotte Reckitt has a past piled on a past, only a bit of which overlaps with that of Adam Foole, a fine gentleman blessed of “glowing catlike stare” now newly entangled in Charlotte’s web once again. Pinkerton, Foole, and a “giant” named Japheth Flood form an unlikely alliance and sally forth to ferret out Shade and Reckitt, each for his own reasons, in the dripping streets and sewers of a decidedly Dickensian London. Price serves up a whodunit that’s sometimes a little faltering of plot but long on lyricism: “He sipped his port and William watched the morning light flare and fracture in the cut glass but he himself did not drink and he held the delicate glass between his thick fingers feeling rough and tired.” In the end, the story is utterly Sherlock-ian—read Moriarty for Shade and Irene Adler for Reckitt—and postmodernly so, full of sly nods and winks and allusions. If it is derivative in the bargain, Conan Doyle by way of Nicholas Meyer and Benedict Cumberbatch, then Price’s yarn is also a lot of fun.Fans of steampunk and Victorian detective fiction alike will enjoy Price’s continent-hopping romp in time.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940169111057 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Macmillan Audio |
| Publication date: | 10/04/2016 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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