The Dark Clue
A Novel
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
“A luscious Victorian thriller” that takes its cue from Wilkie Collins’s gothic masterpiece, The Woman in White (The New York Times Book Review).
Walter Hartright and his sister-in-law Marian have been commissioned to write the definitive biography of the great Romantic landscape artist J. M. W. Turner, one of the boldest and most elusive geniuses of his age. But the only way to draw such a mysterious life out of the shadows is to venture into them themselves. The more Walter and Marian discover about Turner—the depraved company he kept, the sordid places he frequented, and his mysterious link to an unspeakable act—the more difficult it becomes for Walter and Marian to escape the pull of Turner’s dangerous influences, both past and present.
Hailed by the Independent as “devilishly clever,” James Wilson’s epistolary literary thriller weds the characters from one of the best-known sensation novels of the nineteenth century with real historical figures of the era. For readers “seeking a dark tangled tale for an agreeably stormy night, The Dark Clue just might be the solution” (The Boston Globe).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This debut novel by Wilson, acclaimed nonfiction author of The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America, is an evocative and sophisticated literary thriller set in 1850s Victorian England. Taking his cue from an archetypal Victorian suspense novel, Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, Wilson composes an epistolary fiction in letters and diary entries, reviving Collins's classic characters Walter Hartright and his sister-in-law Marion Halcombe. Here, Hartwright and Halcombe are partners in a search to uncover the truth about elusive Romantic landscape artist J.M.W. Turner. Commissioned by the royal Lady Eastlake to write a definitive biography of the misunderstood artist, the duo meet members of the British elite, eccentric and reserved, all of whom have conflicting memories of the reclusive Turner. The upright Hartright discovers a "dark clue" in Turner's paintings, and he becomes obsessed with unraveling the myth and mystery of a man so many people have misunderstood. Art history lovers will take pleasure in the fascinating details of Turner's squalid upbringing and his early years at the Royal Academy. Wilson's exacting, detailed descriptions of Victorian England from Dickensian slums to the gilded drawing rooms of royalty make for vivid storytelling. The tale's pace is stately, but readers tuned to the frequency of 19th-century novels will appreciate Wilson's measured tone and deft treatment of Turner's murky history and Collins's exquisite legacy.
