Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s latest is a sort-of Georgian murder mystery. I say sort-of because there is a murder and a detective (Henry Fielding) and a mystery to solve, though the reader is let in on the solution early on. It’s more a story about a lie that is told for profit and the lies that follow for survival and for love. For love because it is also a love story, albeit a twisted and destructive love, at least to start with. Will the murderer be caught? Will love find a way? You’ll not hear any answer from me. The plot twists and turns and constantly surprises and would make for a great book even without all the other things this has going for it.
What other things, you ask. Well, there’s the sheer joy of the writing that pulls you in and eases you along with the sort of command of language that so many modern thrillers (and it is a thriller) lack. This combines with a wonderful understanding of the contradictions and confusions of personality, especially when strong emotions pull people out of shape. Good people do bad things, bad people do good things, but we always believe in her characters. Some minor characters are sketched in less detail than the main actors, but nothing takes us out of the story. My feelings towards people switched alarmingly: sometimes I was anxious for them to succeed and others I wished them dead and damned.
People are damned. People die. It’s Georgian London: life seems to be lived at a different tempo. Frauds are more elaborate than any Tinder swindler has carried out and stakes are higher. Get caught swindling and you face a short trial and a long rope at Tyburn.
Life in the streets and lodging houses is convincing. Henry Fielding was a real person, not only the author of Tom Jones but the driving force behind the Bow Street Runners. Others, as the excellent historical note makes clear, are based on other historical characters. And the confectionary shop where so much of the action takes place is almost a character itself, filled with delicious things that have me wishing I could shop there: almond wafers, lemon jellies, pickled peaches, pound cakes flavoured with Savile oranges, lozenges, and pastilles, and, wonder of wonders, ice cream. I went out and bought a Georgian cookbook.
The Art of a Lie is a wonderful story, wonderfully told. Do yourself a favour and buy it.