By Gaslight

This was an interesting read for me - and lost a star due to the one thing that irked me throughout - the lack of punctuation, especially for dialogue. Moving past that, the story of one man's quest to track down "the one that got away" is worth pursuing to the end (and its a long book).

London 1885: Billy Pinkerton - ".. a man without weakness, a man without pity .." - US Civil War veteran and son of the founder of Pinkerton's Detective Agency, is on the trail of a woman who is the accomplice of notorious criminal, Edward Shade. Pinkerton hopes to use this woman to lead him to Edward Shade, who has alluded his grasp, and that of his father's for some time. The woman's ex-lover, one Adam Foole, also uses Pinkerton for his own purpose which is as shady as the shadow Pinkerton is chasing.

The narrative alternates between the present, London 1885, and the past, told in flashback and in no sequential order. Not all is as it initially seems and we trudge the gas-lit streets of Victorian London in search of clarity to a secret that has a past betrayal at its very heart.

As mentioned, the lack of punctuation at times rendered that very good storytelling a little hard to follow, especially with a book of this length. The flashbacks and flash-forwards, some of which seem irrelevant and unnecessary at the time, eventually coalesce and slowly a tale is spun that links them together, and reveals a secret that has its roots firmly planted in events of the US Civil War.

Could this be labelled noir fiction ...? I was often reminded of the hero / nemesis catch and mouse game of Holmes and Moriarty, and where the lines of good and evil are often blurred. I wonder how the story would have panned out in two tomes rather than the one .....

This was a book I was so excited about and was anxious to read and like for several reasons. It was likened to The Luminaries which was one of my favorite books in recent years (all 848 pages); the setting in 19th century London; the beautiful, eerie cover art. I was disappointed in By Gaslight. It seemed bloated and kept losing interest. I found when I put the book aside I started and finished several books, being reluctant to pick it up again but was determined to finish it.
A big problem was it skipping back in time and place just when I was getting interested in the vivid descriptions of the filth, squalor and the elegant mansions of London. I wished the back stories of Foole and Pinkerton were reduced to a few paragraphs so I could immerse myself in the Victorian London atmosphere. Perhaps the lengthy civil war section belonged in another book. I have no problem with a story going back in time, but these jumps were so unexpected and abrupt, and these chapters so long that it didn't work for me.

Pinkerton has come from America to find a man named Edward Shade, a con man and thief. Pinkerton's father was the founder of the Pinkerton agency, who before his death was obsessed in finding Shade. Pinkerton believes the key to finding Shade lies with a mysterious woman grifter whom Shade had loved years before in South Africa and has been rumored to be living in London. He meets up with an elegant gentleman , Foole, with connections to some unsavory characters who is also searching for Shade as well as cohorts of the mysterious woman. By most accounts the woman is dead and Shade died during the American Civil War. The search leads them through the foggy streets into upper class drawing rooms, streets of mud and filth interviewing hardened criminals, to a seance, and through the unspeakable filth of the London sewers.

I like a story with twists that I didn't see coming. Unfortunately I figured what became of Shade before Pinkerton did. There have criticisms about the lack of quotation marks and sometime commas. I was more bothered by new chapters talking about 'he' did this or thought that, and it was often a few pages before I knew if the subject of the chapter was Pinkerton, Foole or someone else. At the beginning of the book there was flash (criminal) slang of the 1800's underworld, and had to guess the meaning from context. I had only seen this in one other book but these words were translated. Also, I didn't care for or identify with any of the characters which I found unlikable, but probably liked some of the criminals better than Pinkerton.
There was much to admire in this book, such as the descriptions of the hazy, dark gaslight atmosphere, but thought a very good plot got lost or at least obscured in the lengthy back stories and the structure of the time jumps. I wanted to give it a higher rating, but I plodded along through the 730 pages.