A magnificent literary historical-suspense novel in the tradition of Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries, Patrick DeWitt's The Sisters Brothers, and Michael Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White.
London, 1885. In a city of fog and darkness, the notorious thief Edward Shade exists only as a ghost, a fabled con, a thief of other men's futures -- a man of smoke. William Pinkerton is already famous, the son of a brutal detective, when he descends into the underworld of Victorian London in pursuit of a new lead. His father died without ever tracing Shade; William, still reeling from his loss, 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 in search of 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. What follows is a fog-enshrouded hunt through sewers, opium dens, drawing rooms, and seance halls. Above all, it is the story of the most unlikely of bonds: between William Pinkerton, the greatest detective of his age, and Adam Foole, the one man who may hold the key to finding Edward Shade.
Epic in scope, brilliantly conceived, and stunningly written, Steven Price's By Gaslight is a riveting, atmospheric portrait of two men on the brink. Moving from the diamond mines of South Africa to the battlefields of the Civil War, the novel is a journey into a cityscape of grief, trust, and its breaking, where what we share can bind us even against our darker selves.
A clever, if long-winded conceit.
"I am an unapologetic fan of Victorian detective novels, so this was impossible to resist. The beginning is gripping and the set up is convincing. Character development is captivating, and Price has an absolute gift for period detail. It's a novel that doesn't sit in it's own research too heavily, but uses those details deftly in creating an unforgettable atmosphere. Where the novel seems to drag on here and there, during the American civil war, I was willing to go along because of the promise of a payoff at the end. The desire to throw in a nearly fantastical character to spice up history -- well, Ondaatje does it, why not everyone else? But there's a risk to drawing out a clever conceit like this. A contemporary envisioning of a historical period is largely driven by pacing. When it lags, it's too easy to be distracted by the structure -- the conceit itself. The magic happens when you forget there's someone waving his arms about. So there's an entire interview sequence that was completely unnecessary and introduces an additional level of self-consciousness that nearly ruined this book for me. But I stuck with it, because the characters were so beautifully drawn and ethically compromised and complex. Sigh. I'm not convinced of the payoff. But that may be a larger meditation on life. So I can accept it. I do plan to read everything else Price has written, though. :) I'd only recommend it to friends I am in no danger of losing over a book."
