Customer Reviews

White Stone Day

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4 star:		(1)
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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

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.

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.

In late 1850s London at the bequest of the Pinkerton Group, Falcon reporter Edmund Whitty goes undercover to expose psychic Dr. Gilbert Williams as a fake. Instead shockingly his brother David seemingly contacts him from the other side during a séance. David had been a highly regarded scholar at Oxford who drowned during a rowing race years earlier.

At about the same time at Crouch Manor in Oxfordshire, Reverend William Leffington Boltbyn loves to photograph young girls; presently he is shooting two sisters Emma and Lydia, daughters of the indifferent Revered Lambert who either does not care what happens to his children or is unaware of the threat his religious peer poses to them. From the séance, Whitty begins to track his brother's final days. Whitty becomes aware of the perilous situation when he obtains a photograph of David in a compromising position with someone who looks like Emma. That soon lead the reporter to Oxfordshire and fears that a wolf in sheep's clothing is using the pulpit to hide being a pedophile, but to prove this could expose what he thinks happened to darken the soul of his beloved late brother.

WHITE STONE DAY, the sequel to the spellbinding THE FIEND IN HUMAN, is a terrific Victorian investigative tale. The delightful protagonist wonders if he really heard David from beyond the grave (of course Edmund did not have the Amazing Randi to debunk the psychic). Though he may besmirch his sibling's name and he is losing his courage with every step into the dark he takes, Whitty tries to keep the Lambert siblings safe from a person he believes is a human devil. Great historical mystery.

Harriet Klausner

This book is amazing. The writing is different from anything else out there. The plot is excellent, the dialogue is clever and charming and frequently funny, the characters complex. I liked it better than the Fiend in Human. Gray is a truly unusual talent who hopefully will write many more books of this quality.

White Stone day is the first book I have read by Mr. Gray. What a Wonderful read!! I will be reading more of his books and hope they are as well written as this one was.

Edmund Whitty, A London newspaper correspondent who can usually be counted upon for crisp and lurid copy, has fallen on lean times. After his triumphant expose of a notorious serial killer, he has inexplicably lost his knack for sensational reporting. Broke and desperate, he seizes upon a generous offer from a mysterious American to discredit a quack psychic. But how, he ends up wondering uneasily, does the psychic know so much about a scandal involving Whitty's late brother?

When the psychic is brutally murdered, Whitty finds himself accused of the crime and thrown into Milbank prison, the most bizarre institution of its kind in England. Help comes unexpectedly from "the Captain," a gangster not known for charity work. To save his own skin, Whitty must find the men responsible for the disappearance of the Capatin's young niece, Eliza.

Whitty's search takes him to Oxford, where he meets the brillant and eccentric Reverend William Boltbyn, a renowned children's author who delights in playing croquet, devising elaborate stories, and taking artistic photographs of little girls. There he uncovers a looking-glass world, the dark side of Victoriana, and the murder of innocence.

John MacLachlan Gray, who evoked "the mean streets and byways of 1852 London with a skill worthy of Dickens"[Publisher's Weekly] in The Fiend in Human, spins an even more irresistible tale of dark secrets behind the facade of Victorian respectability.