From the critically acclaimed and USA Today bestselling author Charles Finch comes a prequel to his Charles Lenox Victorian series, in which the theft of an antique painting sends Detective Lenox on a hunt for a criminal mastermind.
Fans of the series, which set the earlier Lenox novels in the 1860s, will know what’s coming in the detective’s personal and professional life, but that in no way decreases the pleasure of this account of his earlier life. Finch’s nimble prose, edged with humor, makes this twelfth in the Charles Lenox series a pure delight.
Finch’s novels offer more than just cozy yet suspenseful story lines. The Vanishing Man also captures the culture of the time in which it’s set ... It’s part of Shakespeare mythology that one day a new play will be unearthed. Finch artfully and most satisfyingly ties up this plot thread in The Vanishing Man as well as that of the identity of the art thief and the murderer ... Longtime fans know what the future holds for Lenox. Everyone else needs to jump into the carriage with Lenox and hold on tight.
And give Finch a lot of credit. Although he was born in New York and lives in Chicago, he seems to have a keen sense of life in London more than a century and a half ago ... Finch may disappoint some readers with the discovery of who took the Shakespeare play and why. But he’ll delight them with other bits of this novel.
