Derby Day: A Victorian Mystery

Description

A gripping novel of romance and rivalry, gambling and greed, from acclaimed novelist and biographer D.J. Taylor - longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2011 It's Derby Day and all of England is heading for the Epsom Downs. Society beauties rub shoulders with Whitechapel street girls, as every class of society gathers with high hopes and taut nerves for the greatest race of the year. All through winter, from London to France, plans have been laid, money exchanged, disputes begun. And uniting the destinies of old Mr Gresham and his tigerish daughter, the rakish Mr Happerton and his crony Captain Raff, brooding Mr Davenant, Mr Pardew the burglar and detective Captain McTurk is the champion horse Tiberius. In this rich and exuberant novel, rife with the idioms of Victorian England, the mysteries pile high, propelling us towards the day of the great race, and we wait with bated breath as the story gallops to a finish that no one expects. Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2011.

D.J. Taylor was born in Norwich in 1960. He is a novelist, critic and acclaimed biographer, whose biography of Thackeray was a critically-acclaimed success and whose Orwell- The Life won the Whitbread Biography prize in 2003. His most recent books are Kept- A Victorian Mystery (a Publishers Weekly Book of the Year), Bright Young People- The Rise and Fall of a Generation 1918-1940, and the novels Ask Alice and At the Chime of a City Clock.

Meticulously plotted and written with bouncy confidence... A rattling good yarn * Spectator * Derby Day is a triumphant success...in this unputdownable Victorian romp [Taylor] enjoyably proves himself to be one of the finest of our 21st-century novelists -- AN Wilson * Financial Times * The novel is richly redolent of the novels of Wilkie Collins, Dickens and Thackeray... The characters who plot and squirm throughout the course of Derby Day are fully rounded and memorably drawn and the atmosphere is palpable. In fact here is an intelligent novel which is also a genuine page-turner. Truly a terrific read -- Peter Burton * Daily Express * Rich and gorgeous as a plum cake, this is absorbing entertainment indeed -- Kate Saunders * The Times * Taylor, with patient stealth, assembles a ring of enjoyably seedy or unprepossessing figures...What distinguishes it from generic thriller-writing is the author's knowledge of the period * Times Literary Supplement *