Jun 20 at 3:49 PM
As a voracious reader and frequent reviewer I'm most often eager to
finish a book and begin the next - not so with Tim Mason's remarkable,
incomparable The Darwin Affair. No moving forward I am simply going to
reread this amazing book to enjoy again the author's impeccable prose
and revisit some of the most fascinating characters to be found both in
real life and fiction. This Victorian-age thriller gives us a full
color portrait of London in that day as well as those who inhabited it -
compelling characters all and real-life events that surrounded the
publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species.
Of course Darwin's book caused an immense hue and cry from scholars and
the all important English clergy. In spite of this Darwin's name was
now on the list of men to be knighted by Queen Victoria. History tells
us that was not to be. Readers follow the ensuing events though the
eyes of London police inspector Charles Field. (
A real life
policeman known to us as Inspector Bucket via Charles Dickens novel
Bleak House.) It is Field's task to protect the royal family, a task
made difficult by an assassination attempt on Queen Victoria and a
murder. Believing that these two events are somehow connected to the
Queen's nomination of Darwin for knighthood, Field pursues a heinous
killer known as "the Chorister."
By
cleverly combining actual historical characters and fictional characters
Mason has given us a historically accurate can't-put-it-down detective
story that is educational and pulse-pounding until the final paragraph.
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