The Unburied

Description

On a bleak, wintry morning in Victorian England, Dr Ned Courtine arrives in the sleepy cathedral town of Thurchester for a reunion with his former university friend, Austin Fickling. Over 20 years have passed since they last saw each other, and Fickling appears anxious and gaunt, ravaged by a strange, existential guilt. In order to deflect Courtine's questions from himself, Fickling recounts the story of Thurchester's ghost, William Burgoyne, once a royalist and treasurer of the cathedral who was murdered in the aftermath of the Civil War. The macabre tale of murder and deception captures Courtine's imagination, and he finds himself unknowingly drawn into a world of haunting evil. A masterpiece of Victorian suspense as well as a dazzling meditation on human passions, THE UNBURIED is a murder mystery that lingers - even after all has been resolved.

Charles Palliser is a bestselling American-born novelist. He has published five novels which have been translated into a dozen languages, and his most well-known novel, THE QUINCUNX, sold over a million copies internationally. He has taught creative writing in Glasgow, London, New Jersey and Poitiers. He lives in London.

A big, fat murder mystery. It is a perfectly pitched pastiche of Victorian Gothic ... compulsive reading * EVENING STANDARD * This is, basically, a cracking yarn ... enormously enjoyable ... Wilkie Collins and chums having been effectively buried themselves for so long, it is charming that Palliser should so faithfully unbury them again * OBSERVER * Fans of Palliser's bestseller THE QUINCUNX will be gripped * DAILY MAIL * Palliser really is the master of the neo-Victorian genre, mixing deliciously spooky tales with high intelligence and a superior style * SUNDAY HERALD * Charles Palliser returns once again to his Wilkie Collins style of atmospheric recreation in this brilliant new novel. This is near faultless story-telling - a one-sitting feast * SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY *