Dark and Grisley Goings On (Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem - Peter Ackroyd)

Member Name: mcrouch

Product:	Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem - Peter Ackroyd
Date:	15/06/01 (229 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to read, well-crafted characters, an intrricate tale with lots of twists

Disadvantages: None that I can think of

A crime novel, an historical novel, a who-done-it (or perhaps that should be a who's-doing-it) and a horror novel all rolled into one. Peter Ackroyd succeeds in blending together a number of genres into a compelling and flawless novel.

It's been a few years since I bought my copy at an airport. From there I took it on holiday and had finished it by the third day, so I read it again. After that I passed it around family and friends and didn't see it again for over eighteen months (and no, it wasn't because they were slow readers). Make no mistake, this is a stunning novel.

I had already had a go at reading "Hawksmoor" by Peter Ackroyd but gave up - it was far too verbose and pretentious a read to enjoy properly. "Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem" is a very different kind of novel. Easy to read, complex, full of historical anecdotes without weighing the story down. It is, to me, a perfect marriage of fact with fiction.

Dan Leno was a famous comedian of the Victorian music halls and features heavily throughout the book. Other cast members include Karl Marx busy studying politics in the British Museum Reading Rooms. There is some involvement with the famous wit and playwright, Oscar Wilde. And there is Lizzie Cree, hanged for the murder of her husband. Each chapter swings from one point-of-view to another with consummate ease.

Victorian London of the 1880's comes alive in the book, living and breathing through its' population of characters. In some sense, the Victorian metropolis is as much a central character within the novel as any of its human characters. The city is obviously a passion of Ackroyd's as he is also the author of "London: A Biography".

If you enjoy Sherlock Holmes stories, Jack-the-Ripper yarns, historical fiction, crime novels or Victorian fiction in general, then this may well be a good choice of book for you. It stands up well to repea
ted readings.

All in all, a satisfying work of macabre fiction.

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