Lamplighter [Paperback]

Anthony O'Neill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2, 2004

In Edinburgh, 1886, two brutal murders and a bizarre exhumation have the entire city on edge. Carus Groves, a conceited and prejudiced police inspector, is assigned the case. Baffled by the superhuman strength required to rip two men apart and drag up a coffin, Groves focuses on an anguished young woman, Evelyn Todd, who claims to have dreamed of the crimes in great detail. Meanwhile, two unlikely friends - Thomas McKnight, a jaded Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, and Joseph Canavan, a compassionate cemetery attendant - are similarly drawn towards Evelyn and her tormented psyche. They discover her extraordinary imagination was violently suppressed in childhood, but in her dreams she retains the image of the lamplighter who brightened the street outside her orphanage each evening. Evelyn now insists the killer is this lamplighter. And as a strange beast gallops through Edinburgh's misty alleys, and Groves' investigation flounders, McKnight and Canavan use the only weapons they possess - reason, logic, intuition, philosophy and sheer luck - to unearth the secrets buried in the dark recesses of Evelyn's mind!

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Australian novelist O'Neill (Scheherazade) tips his hat to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with his own spellbinding tale of a soul divided. Set in the late 19th century in Robert Louis Stevenson's native Edinburgh, the novel follows Evelyn Todd, an excitable young woman whose arrival in the city coincides with a wave of savage murders. Bloody corpses turn up on the main thoroughfares, with ominous messages left near the remains. The city's expert sleuth is away in London, and the aging Insp. Carus Groves finally has an opportunity to step up his unremarkable career, if only he could figure out how to conduct a homicide investigation. The real sleuthing is done by Thomas McKnight and his young friend Joseph Canavan. They're not detectives by trade, but having recently lost their jobs as logic professor and cemetery watchman, respectively, they have the time and wits to pursue the killer. All paths lead to the seemingly respectable Evelyn, who works for a bookbinder. She has been suffering from nightmares in which she has precise visions of the murders as they unfold. Just what is her relationship to the slayings? The gripping climax reveals devastating events from Evelyn's childhood, beginning when she is plucked from an orphanage by a swindler claiming to be her father. O'Neill is a masterful storyteller with a thorough knowledge of both the urban life and the literary tropes of late 19th-century Britain and has created characters embodying the questions about good and evil, faith and fanaticism that preoccupied Stevenson's contemporaries. But readers won't pause too long to admire his erudition-the thrilling story will have them turning pages compulsively.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

An intriguing prologue sets the reader up for an atmospheric thriller set in 1880s Edinburgh. Young, orphaned Evelyn is rescued from an institution by a man claiming to be her father. The girl has had a fascination with the local lamplighters and daydreams about them, going so far as to conjure one up in her prison bedroom one night. Twenty years later, grisly serial murders are taking place all over the city, and there are no suspects. A retiring inspector pairs with a university professor and his grave-digging assistant. When Evelyn appears in the police station, describing dreams of all the murder scenes and mentioning pertinent messages left behind by the killer, whom she can't identify, the investigators look into her own mysterious past. The author maintains a methodical yet engaging pace. Details and clues are parceled out, but readers will enjoy the Victorian gothic setting and the characters, even though they will likely figure out who the murderer is long before the end. Purchase where historical mysteries and thrillers are popular. Kaite Mediatore
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Review (February 2, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0755303334
• ISBN-13: 978-0732279783
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,723,651 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "The shadow world of the imagination...as deep as hell.", April 15, 2003

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Lamplighter: A Novel (Hardcover)

The streets of Edinburgh in 1886 run with blood as a series of bizarre deaths and dismemberments, possibly by some huge wild animal, haunt the public imagination and send the police force into high dudgeon. A frail young woman, Evelyn Todd, is thought to be at the root of these horrifying crimes. Evelyn grew up in an institution in the mid-1860's, where the administrator reined in her imagination and punished her especially for the stories about a lamplighter, with which she entertained the other children. Later, when James Ainslie, Laird of Millenhall, claimed to be her father, she lived at his estate, a frightened and solitary child who took refuge in her paintings, in which she usually included an avuncular gentleman in peaked cap, blue jacket, and gray scarf, whom she referred to as "Leerie," a lamplighter.

An 1886, Evelyn, now in her twenties, comes under investigation for a series of murders. Evelyn has had vivid and revelatory dreams about each of the murders, though she insists that she has not been present; has no real, firsthand knowledge of any of the murders; and does not know about them ahead of time. The murdered men are all members of a secret society, the Mirror Society, whose membership also includes James Ainslie, Evelyn's "father." Of the murders, Evelyn says only that she believes them to have been committed by "the lamplighter."

In an unusual narrative twist to this Gothic and atmospheric novel, O'Neill employs two sets of characters to track Evelyn and ascertain her relationship to these murders. Carus Groves and his assistant, Pringle, are trying to solve the police cases involving the law and its penalties, while Professor Thomas McKnight, Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, and his friend Canavan are trying to solve the larger questions of who Evelyn really is, why she is able to see details of the crimes in her dreams, and whether she may represent the "devil inherent in all of us. A primeval instinct, a fundamental component of evolution." The reader cannot help wondering if the lamplighter, who carries fire to the lamps of the city, is, in reality, Lucifer, whose name, literally translated, means "carrier of fire."

Eventually, McKnight and Canavan follow Evelyn into Hades in an effort to rescue her from the devil they believe resides within her, and the reader is drawn into a metaphysical and theological debate regarding the nature of selfhood, the existence of evil, its connection both to the imagination and reality, and the extent to which mankind exercises free will in the desire to control outcomes. O'Neill uses the vocabulary of religion and the new perceptions which resulted from Darwin's Origin of the Species to try to explain those aspects of human nature which Freud and the psychoanalysts later developed into a new science at the turn of the century. O'Neill is a fine writer whose use of vivid verbs and lively description helps to animate this serious philosophical debate. The reader's job is figure out what is real and what is not, a task which is not as easy as it may seem in this complex and serious novel. Mary Whipple

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars terrific historical suspense thriller, February 19, 2003

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Lamplighter: A Novel (Hardcover)

In 1886 Edinburgh residents become frightened when a series of brutal murders occur and an eerie grave-robbing incident happens. The brass assigns Inspector Carus Groves to solve the case. Carus is a sanctimonious egotist writing his memoirs every evening, but turning the accounts into more of an autobiographical fiction piece than a biography. He sees himself as a hero on adventurer rather than a plodding cop though on this serial killing case he has doubts about himself.

Retired due to age, Edinburgh University Professor of Logic and Metaphysics Thomas McKnight and his Irish friend Canavan, fired as the watchman of the cemetery where the grave robbery occurred, begin their own inquiries. The duo searches for a seemingly supernatural person who apparently tore an adult into pieces. The clues lead to publisher assistant Evelyn Todd, who returned to her home city where two decades ago she lived as a Dickens poster girl orphan. She knows too much detail about the crimes so McKnight and Canavan try mesmerism, Freudian psychoanalysis, metaphysics, and other isms seeking her link to the terror of the night.

The atmosphere of a terrorized Edinburgh will be felt by the reader once the prologue is finished and the tale moves forward to 1886. The story line grips the audience as the reader compares the two investigations, but wonders if the culprit is supernatural or human. The cast is cleverly drawn to add depth to the tension while showing the foibles of the lead players. Fans of historical suspense thrillers where the tension just keeps growing will want to read Anthony O'Neill's terrific tale but remember to keep the lights on.

Harriet Klausner

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enter the horror matrix, May 18, 2003

By 

Reg Armstrong (New South Wales) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lamplighter: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is a wonderfully thoughtful and atmospheric novel - mindbending and genre-bending. There are philosophical dialogues that may challenge some readers, but overall it's a very fluid and exciting read, and much more "human" than you'd expect for a book with so many gruesome scenes and such groteqsue imagery. The author doesn't forget to buttress his outrageous story with authenticity, and exhibits a welcome ambivalence about good & evil.