This title concludes Morrow’s (literature, Bard Coll.;
The Forger’s Daughter) trilogy about the heated rivalry between two literary forgers, Will and the savage Henry Slader. It’s a compelling tale of decades-long hatred. This book starts with Slader clawing his way out of a grave, having been buried alive after an attempt to murder Will. Slader needs money, so when he recuperates, he blackmails Will’s painter daughter Nicole into forging a string of letters from Mary Shelley, a literary find that will be worth a fortune at auction. How he blackmails her is a shocker, changing one’s reading of events from an earlier tome in the series. It ends in a bloody confrontation at Mary’s grave when Nicole arrives to deliver the letters to him. Despite the air of paranoia that charges the novel, the narrative pace is slow. There’s time to describe how one produces a good forgery and to lay out Nicole’s veneration of the dead woman whose past she defiles by falsifying Mary’s words and feelings.
VERDICT An out-of-the-ordinary treat for serious fiction readers. Distinct in subject matter but not tone, this book echoes Daphne du Maurier’s Gothic novel Rebecca and Poe’s fevered tales.
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