An atmospheric thriller set in nineteenth-century Edinburgh,
Anthony O'Neill's elegant, darkly masterful novel is full of
psychological suspense and first-rate horror.
Evelyn is a clever orphan at the Fountainbridge Institute for
Destitute Girls. Enchanted by a cheerful lamplighter who fires the
streetlamp outside her window each evening, she mesmerizes the
other girls with flights of fancy. In a time before Freudian
awareness of sexuality and the subconscious mind, such tales are
forbidden by the institute's governor, who warns Evelyn to cease
her nocturnal storytelling.
Evelyn defies him -- and is cast out of the orphanage and
sacrificed to a shadowy figure claiming to be her long-lost father.
Who is this man, and why does he lock Evelyn away in a hunting
lodge?
Years later, the mutilated body of a professor of ecclesiastical
law turns up on one of Edinburgh's finest streets; the grave of a
famous colonel is ravaged; a shady entrepreneur is slaughtered
while dashing for a train; and a retired lighthouse keeper is
ripped to shreds while walking his dog -- all this after Evelyn,
now a young woman, has reappeared in the city. What connects the
victims? And what of Evelyn, anguished and appealing, who
repeatedly claims to have dreamed the murders in great detail --
each time blaming a mysterious "lamplighter"?
Leading the official investigation is Carus Groves, a conceited
yet effective police inspector desperate to cap his unremarkable
career with a sensational case. Heading up the unofficial
investigation is a disillusioned professor of logic and
metaphysics, Thomas McKnight, and his assistant, Joseph Canavan, a
strapping young gravedigger. Using reason, intuition, philosophy,
and luck, these men race to solve the murders and unveil the source
of Evelyn's torment, and in so doing penetrate the very gates of
Hell.
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