Violence forever stalks the margins of the story, and we are privy to situations that that are both raw and beautiful, though always expressing the complexities of the human heart. Spinning fiction out of fact, Price creates an evocative world, cast not in shades of stark black and white, but rather in morally complex herringbone. Pinkerton's legacy serves as the jumping off point for a high energy drama starring his son, a second-generation detective named William Pinkerton, who has taken over the business after the death of his father.

I found myself returning to passages not only because I occasionally lost the thread of this historical mystery's manifold plots, sub-plots and asides, but because I wanted to revisit the somber music of the telling.Ĭhicago-based Allan Pinkerton, founder of the famous (some would say infamous) detective agency that bore his name, has been a fixture of Civil War-era fiction and non-fiction alike. By Gaslight, the second novel by award-winning Canadian poet Steven Price, proves engrossing enough to warrant its forest-depleting bulk.

Readers may approach a doorstop novel of some 700-plus pages with a mixture of hope and dread: hope that the tome will offer a tale to relish, dread from being betrayed one too many times. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title By Gaslight Author Steven Price

By Gaslight by Steven Price