By Gaslight by Steven Price

By Gaslight by Steven Price
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hardcover, 752 pages
Published August 23rd 2016 by McClelland & Stewart
Source: print review copy from Penguin Random House Canada


This is a very long book and it took me a long time to read but I will say I enjoyed it. It is slow-paced and I didn't have a hard time putting it down but each time I picked it up I easily got lost in the world again. This is historical fiction set during the Victorian era featuring The Pinkertons, William mainly. It's not based on truth nor does it profess to be. It does give one insight into Victorian London, especially the criminal class, and surprisingly the other main theme is the American Civil War. I enjoyed the story and really enjoyed the characters and would read another book by the same author. However, it had a few problems that kept it from being reader friendly. Firstly, there are no quotation marks and while I've got used to that being acceptable in modern literature it does always slow down the reading. Secondly, the plot moves back and forth in space and time while having very long chapters.I like the device of switching back and forth from the past to present but the chapters were so long in this book that the switches were hard to adjust to. Ths doesn't interfere with understanding the plot but does slow down the reading making you feel more like plodding through the book than galloping along with it.