"A young man searching for his origins is drawn from the Northern England countryside into the violent and corrupt London underworld of the late Regency."@en
"A young man searching for his origins is drawn from the Northern England countryside into the violent and corrupt London underworld of the late Regency."
"An extraordinary modern novel in the Victorian tradition, Charles Palliser has created something extraordinary--a plot within a plot within a plot of family secrets, mysterious clues, low-born birth, high-reaching immorality, and, always, always the fog-enshrouded, enigmatic character of 19th century -- London itself. "You read the first page and down you wonderfully fall, into a long, large, wide world of fiction." THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW."@en
"Set in nineteenth-century England, this tale of disinheritance, murder and deception links together a quincunx of families - the Huffams, the Mompessons, Clothiers, Maliphants and Palphramonds. The link is the codicil to the will of the wealthy but long-deceased Jeoffrey Huffam. John Huffam's mother holds the codicil, but many others will stop short of nothing, including murder, to get it. ."