The Forger's Requiem
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
“Like the love child of Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle . . . delightful to read.”—NPR.org, on The Forgers
A New York Times Book Review Paperback Row Pick of the Week
A gripping literary thriller that brings readers inside the world of expert forgery, rivalrous fury, and generations of dark family secrets, with Mary Shelley’s voice and life woven throughout
Literary forger Henry Slader, assaulted and presumed dead by his longtime nemesis, Will, awakens in a shallow grave, suffocating in dirt. Concussed and disoriented, Slader exhumes himself and sets out to exact revenge on his rival, orchestrate Will’s downfall, and make a fortune along the way—armed with a devastating secret about Will’s past.
Slader quickly draws in Will’s daughter, Nicole, wielding his threats against her father to blackmail her into forging inscriptions by such authors as Poe, Hemingway, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein. As Nicole’s skill grows, so does her devotion to—and doubts about—her father’s integrity, until she commits the ultimate betrayal for the sake of his freedom. With breathtakingly precise background knowledge and virtuoso execution, Nicole forges a suite of brilliantly convincing and surpassingly valuable letters by Frankenstein author Mary Shelley—planting within them the seeds of Slader’s doom.
Moving between upstate New York, a village in Ireland, London, and ending in a shocking standoff at the site of Mary Shelley’s grave in a coastal town in Southern England, The Forger’s Requiem is both a compelling standalone novel and the crescendo ending to the trilogy Joyce Carol Oates has called “lethally enthralling to read.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Morrow (The Forger's Daughter) brings his Forgers trilogy to a close with a disappointing finale that's equal parts sluggish and overstuffed. A brawl between rival literary forgers Henry Slader and Will Gardener ends when Will's daughter, 20-something Nicole, hits Henry with a shovel, then buries him in a shallow grave behind their house in the Hudson Valley. Despite nursing a concussion so severe he can't remember his name, Henry manages to dig himself out of the ground before vandalizing Will's home and setting out for revenge. He tracks down Nicole, and, after sowing doubts about her father's loyalties, he convinces her to forge inscriptions by Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce, as well as a stack of letters between Mary Shelley and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft. It soon becomes clear, however, that grown men underestimate Nicole at their own risk. Morrow builds his plot atop bits of amusing literary trivia, but the fleetness of the previous Forgers books is sorely missing, replaced by turgid storytelling that consistently grinds the action to a halt. It's a letdown.
