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Summary
Summary
A brilliant historical mystery series begins: in gaslit Victorian London, writer Thomas De Quincey must become a detective to clear his own name.
Thomas De Quincey, infamous for his memoir Confessions of an English Opium-Eater , is the major suspect in a series of ferocious mass murders identical to ones that terrorized London forty-three years earlier.
The blueprint for the killings seems to be De Quincey's essay On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts . Desperate to clear his name but crippled by opium addiction, De Quincey is aided by his devoted daughter Emily and a pair of determined Scotland Yard detectives.
In Murder as a Fine Art , David Morrell plucks De Quincey, Victorian London, and the Ratcliffe Highway murders from history. Fogbound streets become a battleground between a literary star and a brilliant murderer, whose lives are linked by secrets long buried but never forgotten.
Author Notes
David Morrell, an award-winning Canadian writer of horror fiction, was born in 1943 in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. He was educated at the University of Waterloo and earned his Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University. Morrell is best known as the creator of John Rambo, the hero of his first novel, First Blood. The novel was adapted for screen and starred Sylvester Stallone. Although Morrell was not happy with the depiction of the Rambo character in the movie, he did write several sequels to First Blood and two further scripts for the sequels to the original movie. He also wrote a number of other books including The Brotherhood of the Rose which became a best seller in 1984.
David Morrell has written one scholarly work, John Barth: An Introduction, published by Pennsylvania State University in 1977 and has taught at the University of Iowa. He now lives in the United States with his wife and daughter (another child, a son, is deceased).
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A killer copying the brutal 1811 Ratcliffe Highway murders terrorizes 1854 London in this brilliant crime thriller from Morrell (First Blood). The earlier slaughters, attributed to a John Williams, were the subject of a controversial essay by Thomas De Quincey entitled "On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts." A man who considers himself an "artist of death" duplicates the first set of Williams's killings by using a mallet and a knife to dispatch a shopkeeper, his wife, their two children (including an infant), and a servant. The similarities send the police after De Quincey, who, aided by his able daughter Emily, must vindicate himself and catch the killer. Morrell tosses in the political machinations of Lord Palmerston, then Home Secretary, who has been promoting revolution in Europe to assure Great Britain's political dominance. Everything works-the horrifying depiction of the murders, the asides explaining the impact of train travel on English society, nail-biting action sequences-making this book an epitome of the intelligent page-turner. Agent: Jane Dystel, Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* At the start of this exceptional historical mystery, an artist of death prepares himself for his greatest creation the gruesome slaughter of a young shop owner and his family. In 1854, East Londoners hadn't seen such horrific murders since 1851, when John Williams also killed a shopkeeper and his family in a nearby neighborhood. The new crime finds Detective Inspector Shawn Ryan at the grisly, chaotic crime scene, where evidence is trampled as the killer blithely escapes. Visiting London at the time, for reasons he can't fully understand, is Thomas De Quincey, scandalous opium eater and author of the 1827 satirical essay, On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts, and two newer essays in which he lauds various horrific details of the Williams killings as sublime art. DI Ryan initially treats the drug-riddled, elderly writer as a suspect but eventually accepts his help, if grudgingly. Military-thriller writer Morrell switches genres here in a riveting novel packed with edifying historical minutiae seamlessly inserted into a story narrated in part by De Quincey's daughter and partly in revealing, dialogue-rich prose. The page-flipping action, taut atmosphere, and multifaceted characters will remind readers of D. E. Meredith's Hatton and Roumonde mysteries and Kenneth Cameron's The Frightened Man (2009). Sure to be a hit with the gaslight crowd.--Baker, Jen Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Notorious opium addict and memoirist Thomas De Quincy is a suspect in a series of ghastly murders terrorizing 19th-century London. With the assistance of his bright daughter Emily and determined Scotland Yard detectives, De Quincy must stop a killer who bases his crimes on notorious cases. Verdict Winner of the Reading List Award for Best Mystery, this expertly plotted page-turner is packed with tense action and diverting historical minutia. (LJ 12/12) © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.