Hawksmoor - Hardcover

Ackroyd, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241116643 ISBN 13: 9780241116647

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton Limited, 1985

Synopsis

Integrating portraits of an eighteenth-century architect and a modern London police inspector, this novel focuses on two men, both undergoing a process of disintegration and both involved in a series of similar murders

About this title

About the Author

Derek Jacobi is a celebrated actor, having won a Tony Award for Much Ado About Nothing, and an Emmy award for Graham Greene's The Tenth Man. Jacobi is perhaps best known for his brilliant portrayal of the Emperor in the miniseries I Claudius.

Reviews

This is a moody tale of ancient superstition and the modern havoc it spawns. There's no one better to read it than Sir Derek Jacobi, whose sepulchral voice seems to echo from the story's eighteenth-century beginning. Two hundred and fifty years ago, architect Nicholas Dyer designed devilry into the churches he built after the great fire of London. Now those churches are the sites of macabre murders; it's up to CID Detective Nicholas Hawksmoor to resolve this spooky and involving tale of evil-once-done. A.C.S. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Eighteenth- and 20th-century London merge as Nicholas Hawksmoor, C.I.D., investigates a series of murders whose only connection is locale18th-century churches constructed by Nicholas Dyer. Resisting modern, more systematic methods of detection, Hawksmoor interprets the historic connection between these places, old murders and new, slayers and slain, murderers and pursuers, defying time, religion, and reason itself. Despite exacting re-creation of Dyer's London and careful mirroring of 18th-century people and places in the 20th century, the novel lacks a focus that would make a point behind the wealth of detail. As it is, tantalizing symmetries, provocative discussions of architecture, debates on ancient and modern lead nowhere and frustrate the reader. Cynthia Johnson Whealler, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, Mass.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hamish Hamilton Limited
• Publication date: 1985
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0241116643
• ISBN 13: 9780241116647
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320