Book description
1891. London is simmering in the oppressive summer heat, the air
thick with sexual repression. But a wave of morality is about to rock
the capital as the puritans of the London Vigilance Committee seek out
perversion and aberrant behaviour in all its forms.
Charles Webster, an impoverished photographer working at the Lyceum
Theatre, has been sucked into a shadowy demi-monde which exists
beneath the surface of civilized society. It is a world of
pornographers and prostitutes, orchestrated by master manipulator
Marlow, for whom Webster illicitly provides theatrical costumes for
pornographic shoots.
But knowledge of this enterprise has somehow reached the Lyceum's
upright theatre manager, Bram Stoker, who suspects Webster's
involvement. As the net tightens around Marlow and his cohorts and
public outrage sweeps the city, a member of the aristocracy is accused
of killing a child prostitute...
Robert Edric was born in 1956. His novels include
Winter Garden
(1985 James Tait Black Prize winner),
A New Ice Age
(1986 runner-up for the 1986 Guardian Fiction Prize),
The Book of
the Heathen
(shortlisted for the 2001 WH Smith Literary Award),
Peacetime
(longlisted for the Booker Prize 2002),
Gathering the Water
(longlisted for the Booker Prize 2006) and
In Zodiac Light
, which was shortlisted for the Dublin Impac Prize 2010. He lives in
Yorkshire
