7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Victorian newspaperman embroiled with ghosts and kidnappers, November 30, 2005
Gray plots his second excellent Victorian literary thriller around two activities that were all the rage in mid-19th century England: photography and spiritualism.
Edmund Whitty, the earthy London newspaper writer and man of excess, first seen in "The Fiend in Human," has fallen on hard times. All his best ideas are being uncannily scooped by a rival correspondent and he's in "fearsome debt" to the Captain, a London crime boss, "the result of a wager in the sport of ratting, with compound interest growing like a tumour and default a mathematical certainty."
Approached by an American Pinkerton agent to expose a fraudulent psychic, Whitty seizes the opportunity, but the séance does not go according to plan. His brother David, who died in a rowing accident at Oxford, appears, plaintively proclaiming, "I did not live as you think I lived! I did not die as you think I died!"
Meanwhile, in Oxfordshire, Rev. William L. Boltbyn, based loosely on Lewis Carroll, is singularly enchanted by the Lambert sisters, particularly Emma, who is on the cusp of womanhood, a fact Boltbyn bitterly bemoans. He whiles away hours telling the girls tales and taking pictures of them in various romantic and classical poses, some suggestive.
Before it's over Whitty will be accused of murder and cast into the bowels of Millbank prison, only to acquire a new commission - the breaking of a child pornography ring which may involve both his dead brother and the abducted young sister of the distraught Captain, a girl bearing a strong resemblance to Emma Lambert.
Other viewpoints include a comically psychopathic pair of thugs for hire and the daring, foolhardy Lambert sisters keen on ferreting out the sinister secrets of the local Duke. Steeped in Victorian sensibilities of romance, propriety and the gulf between the classes, redolent with London's stewpots and taverns and bustling streets, Gray's witty, suspenseful story builds to a tense and satisfying climax.
--Portsmouth Herald
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Already waiting for the next installment, November 22, 2005
If the highest praise you can give a book is that it leaves you wanting to read more, then White Stone Day deserves top accolades. It has just about everything you need in a novel: a gripping plot, a strong sense of time and place that nonetheless doesn't overwhelm the proceedings, a sure narrative drive, a diverse and well-drawn supporting cast of characters, and perhaps most important, an intriguing and entertaining protagonist. White Stone Day would have been a very good book with any other main character; with cynical, dissolute, at times hapless Edmund Whitty as the protagonist, it's a great book--perhaps even more satisfying than The Fiend in Human, to which this book is a sequel.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Alice in Pedoland, March 23, 2007
It's a sad comment on our times that even thrillers centering around serial killers don't give us a chill anymore. So to evoke the slightest ghost of a horrifed shudder, more and more authors are turning to crimes against children - where they will turn when even these fail to appall us? I gave Gray's first Whitty novel, The Fiend in Human, five stars and likened it to a cross between Dickens and Spillane. This sequel is still plenty good, but it didn't have quite as much bite. The previous book's most vivid parts lay in its descriptions of one of 1852 London's most formidable slums. It's difficult to elicit as much color from a Victorian nobleman's country estate, no matter how depraved its residents may be, as this tale tries to do. The Lewis Carroll and "Alice" analogy here is appealing. Too, Gray shows the same solid command of Victorian diction and cadences of speech (which can be so awful when other authors do them badly). Highly recommended.
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