The Forger's Requiem

I believe I was promised a literary thriller?

As I was browsing NetGalley, I saw something about rare books, forgeries, and Mary Shelley. Let’s press that “request” button at once!

Ok, so somebody wakes up buried alive, but manages to get out, with amnesia and injuries. “When he tried to scream, his screams were just ideas of screams.” Me: That’s a lot of screams in one sentence! I wonder how this particular read will go…

The guy that got buried alive is named Henry Slader. He is a literary forger who ran afoul of another forger (Will) and his daughter Nicole (who is a talented forger too, what a surprise). Everyone has skeletons in the closet, and lots of family and other secrets will come to light during the course of this show more book. After revealing that he isn’t dead after all, Slader sort of blackmails Nicole to help him with various forgeries, as well as the forgery of a lifetime – “newly discovered” letters of Mary Shelley. A retired detective, Pollock, shows up, as a cold case, the murder of Nicole’s uncle that happened twenty years ago, will not let him rest. Etc, etc, etc.

There is an interesting story here. Somewhere. Buried deep.

It is buried beneath:

😩 the writing that I could not stomach
😩 unnecessary details
😩 telling without showing
😩 meandering plot
😩 stuff happening out of the blue
😩 hanging threads explained in “oh, by the way” sentences
😩 romance that is just suddenly there
😩 literary allusions badly glued on (what kind of person quotes Emily Dickinson when going to dig up a grave to check if the supposedly dead person is still there???)
😩 the excruciating boredom I felt while reading

When Nicole went to London to do research on Mary Shelley for her forgery project, the book became better for a short while. These pages belonged in a better novel. Reading about Mary Shelley was interesting, and I would like to read more at some point. There was that, at least.
Finishing the book was a chore! I am glad it was short.

Thanks a lot to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC! (Sorry it didn’t work out.) show less

3.5

To live was to lie, he decided. Such was the price of being human. In the end, all people were forgers. from The Forger’s Requiem by Bradford Morrow

I am late to the party, reading the last installment in a trilogy. But I am happy to say that The Forger’s Requiem works as a stand alone novel. The backstory is presented in a natural way in the narrative.

The novel’s opening scene is riveting, a hook that goes deep and won’t let go. A man comes to and realizes he is unable to breath or move, that he has been buried alive, saved only by a small pocket of air. He crawls his way out, his head aching, fingers charred, his memory foggy. It takes some time for him to piece together what had happened as he crawls and stumbles out of the show more woods.

Eventually he comes to an empty house, breaks in, treats his injuries. It is the house of the people who had tried to kill him and hide his body.

Henry Slader had incriminating photographs and was blackmailing Will. Will’s daughter saw Slader come at her father with a knife and hit Slader on the head.

Slader was a forger of rare books and manuscripts. Will was, too,before he served a prison term for literary forgery. But Will owed Slader.

Nicole had learned forgery from her dad. Slader demands Nicole create forgeries for him to sell in exchange for photographic proof that her father murdered her mother’s brother.

Slader in hiding reinvents himself over and over while Nicole travels abroad to study Mary Shelley in preparation for forging letters from Mary to her deceased mother, keeping her father in the dark about her plans.

But things are revealed that challenge the truth Nicole wanted to believe.

I enjoyed the writing and learning insider details about literary forgeries. The story is told from Slader’s and Nicole’s viewpoints, allowing insights. I found it an entertaining read.

I previously enjoyed Morrow’s novel The Prague Sonata.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley show less

I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher for promotional purposes.

This book is technically the last book in a trilogy but can be read as a standalone. I have not read the previous two books and was able to follow the story. Reading the other books would have been helpful, but it was not necessary.

I enjoyed the writing style the most. It was elegant and felt like a throwback to classic literature. Given that this book centers on literary forgery of classic authors, the writing style was perfect.

As for the characters, I loved the main character, Nicole. She really is the star of this book.

Since Nicole is forging Mary Shelley letters, a fair chunk of the book discusses Mary Shelley and her book Frankenstein. I show more haven’t read Frankenstein but it is on my TBR and I have always been fascinated by her. I loved learning more about Shelley and her life. I think this book will be what pushes me to finally read Frankenstein.

This book is categorized as a literary thriller, however, it is a little light on any thriller aspects.

Lastly, I want to share a quote about handwriting that I absolutely loved. Nicole states, “printing doesn’t have the same almost sexual feel that writing does, where the hand embraces the pen, the pen touches the skin of the paper, the ink flows out-“ (pg. 214). I’ve always found handwritten things to be far more intimate than anything printed and this quote just sums it up perfectly!

Overall, this was an interesting literary thriller exploring the world of forgery! show less