A Treacherous Likeness (Charles Maddox 3) - Tapa dura

The novel is concerned with rum goings-on in the Shelley-Byron circle, and uses a mystery plot to fill in
some of the lacunae of their life stories, with what I thought was remarkable ingenuity.

In the dying days of 1850 the young detective Charles Maddox takes on a new case. His client? The only surviving son of the long-dead poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and his wife Mary, author of Frankenstein.

Charles soon finds himself being drawn into the bitter battle being waged over the poet's literary legacy, but then he makes a chance discovery that raises new doubts about the death of Shelley's first wife, Harriet, and he starts to question whether she did indeed kill herself, or whether what really happened was far more sinister than suicide.

As he's drawn deeper into the tangled web of the past, Charles discovers darker and more disturbing secrets, until he comes face to face with the terrible possibility that his own great-uncle is implicated in a conspiracy to conceal the truth that stretches back more than thirty years.

The story of the Shelleys is one of love and death, of loss and betrayal. In this follow-up to the acclaimed Tom-All-Alone's, Lynn Shepherd offers her own fictional version of that story, which suggests new and shocking answers to mysteries that still persist to this day, and have never yet been fully explained.

Praise for Tom-All-Alone's:

A brilliant and sinister remake of Bleak House, exposing the vicious underworld of Victorian London. Totally gripping. - John Carey.

Dickens' s world described with modern precision. - The Times.

Beaitifully written... an absorbing read - Literary Review.

A necessary eye for squalor, meticulous research and deft plotting make this a book... you'll be guaranteed to enjoy. - Guardian.