The Unburied - Hardcover

Palliser, Charles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374280355 ISBN 13: 9780374280352

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999

Synopsis

A riveting historical murder-mystery by the bestselling author of The Quincunx.

There are three separate tales interwoven in this novel-three tales that could be called ghost stories, for their mysteries can never be resolved, the victims and the perpetrators never laid to rest.

Dr. Courtine, an unworldly academic, is invited to spend the days before Christmas with an old friend. Twenty years have passed since Courtine and Austin last met, and the invitation to Austin's home in the cathedral close of Thurchester is a welcome one. When Courtine arrives, Austin tells him a tale of deadly rivalry and murder two centuries old. The mystery captures Courtine's donnish imagination, as it is intended to do.

Courtine also plans to pursue his research into another unresolved and older mystery in the labyrinthine cathedral library. If he can track down an elusive eleventh-century manuscript, he hopes to dispose of a deadly rival of his own. Doubly distracted, Courtine becomes unwittingly enmeshed in the sequence of terrible events that follows his arrival, and he becomes witness to a murder that seems never to have been committed.

About this title

About the Author

Charles Palliser is the author of The Quincunx and Betrayals. He lives in London, England.

Reviews

Palliser's penchant for riddles wrapped in enigmas (Betrayals, 1995, etc.) continues with a busy tale, set in a cathedral in the south of England, about an old recluse murdered for his money, and an old friendship that has seen better days. Unassuming scholar Ned Cortine, a historian at Oxford, has come to spend a few days before Christmas, 1882, in the ancient town of Thurcester, ostensibly to visit a friend from his youth, Austin, whom he hasnt seen in more than 20 years. More importantly, however, Ned hopes to locate a manuscript in the cathedral library that would refute a rival historian on an obscure point in Anglo-Saxon history. But a hostile greeting and strange behavior from Austin, coupled with Ned's introduction to a curious murder in the cathedral several centuries earlier, cast shadows on his research, and he finds himself caught up in present- day intrigues as well as ancient. Just as he uncovers the 11th-century prize he seeks, he's jolted from the past by being identified, along with Austin, as the last to have seen old Mr. Stonex, Thurcester's reclusive banker, alive before his brutal murder. Then, as if that weren't enough, a body is found in a wall of the cathedral, the remains of the man believed to have been murdered those several centuries before. Ned succeeds in unraveling the old mystery but, in an inquest, fails to persuade anyone with his theory about who killed Stonex, leaving the wrong man to be charged. His failure, accompanied by an assault on his integrity as a historian and the belief that Austin was involved in the murder, prompts him to leave town sadder but much wiser, content to record his experiences privately for posterity. A complex puzzler, though the real story here, which is finely done even in its anachronistic 19th-century style, is the simple one of a decent man forced at last to open his eyes and take a good look around. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Palliser has created another tour de force of intricate plotting and darkly Victorian atmosphere. As with the best-selling The Quincunx, the reader is compulsively absorbed by tantalizing partial truths and vague foreshadowings, though coincidence plays a less intrusive role here. On a visit to an old school friend in Thurchester, England, professional historian Courtine looks forward to doing research in the cathedral library and renewing ties; he does not expect to become embroiled in a controversy surrounding a centuries-old mystery, nor does he anticipate being a major witness to a gruesome murder. Palliser brilliantly portrays the vicious rivalries particular to self-contained religious and educational institutionsArivalries that have been repeating themselves for 250 years since the horrific death of Canon Treasurer William Burgoyne and the mysterious disappearance of the Cathedral Mason Gambrill. This riveting story is as much psychological thriller as it is mystery. Highly recommended.
-ACynthia Johnson, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, MA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

With his two previous novels--The Quincunx (1990) and The Sensationist (1991)--Palliser established himself as a masterful writer whose atmospheric Victorian mysteries challenge readers' intellects as well as their curiosity. His long-awaited third novel won't disappoint. A gripping and provocative tale again set in the nineteenth century, the story centers around an eminent historian, Dr. Courtine, who is invited to visit his old friend Austin Fickling. The two parted on chilly terms decades earlier after Courtine accused Fickling of destroying his marriage, but Courtine sees Fickling's invitation as an opportunity for a reconciliation. And the invitation offers an excellent opportunity for Courtine to pursue, in the local cathedral library, his research on an unsolved eleventh-century murder. But when Courtine arrives, he finds Fickling nervous, secretive, and hostile, and Courtine senses that a sinister motive fueled Fickling's invitation. Ghostly midnight visits, a malodorous discovery beneath the cathedral floor, and a shocking truth revealed in the library's ancient texts add to Courtine's unease. Then an eccentric banker is murdered moments after Courtine and Fickling leave his house, and suddenly the sense of foreboding has turned into something real and lethal. This rich, hypnotic, cleverly constructed morality tale is must reading both for Victorian mystery lovers (see Anne Perry, below) and for those who like literarily sophisticated crime novels similar to Caleb Carr's The Alienist. Emily Melton

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374280355
• ISBN 13: 9780374280352
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400