White Stone Day by John MacLachlan Gray

From the Publisher

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?

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

The Washington Post - Patrick Anderson

If you have a taste for the sardonic, this sophisticated literary thriller is utterly delicious.

Publishers Weekly

In Gray's gripping second novel to feature Edmund Whitty (after 2003's The Fiend in Human), the Victorian journalist agrees to go undercover to expose a phony psychic. At a s ance in a dilapidated London town house, Whitty is contacted by the spirit of his brother, David, a highly successful Oxford scholar and athlete who drowned mysteriously during a crew race years earlier. Meanwhile, at Crouch Manor in Oxfordshire, the Rev. William L. Boltbyn (inspired by Lewis Carroll) enjoys photographing young girls and then placing small white stones in his diary to mark particularly good days. Boltbyn's current subjects are Emma and Lydia Lambert, daughters of a cold and distant fellow cleric who's oblivious to the dangers they face. These intrigues eventually intersect when Whitty receives a compromising photograph of his late brother with a young girl resembling Emma. Punctuated by graphic newspaper reports, clever poems and puzzles, this thriller builds to a tense and riveting climax. (Dec.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Merrie Olde England is foggy, dirty, thug-and-crime-ridden. Gray's journalist hero spends his second outing (The Fiend in Human, 2003) trying hard to keep from being murdered in it. Edmond Whitty is a scandal-sheet hack, and he knows it. But impecunious second sons with limited earning power despite having been over-educated at Eton and Oxford dip into whatever shillings they can find. These days Whitty-witty indeed, in a mordant way, and handsome enough to be catnip to the ladies-faces more trouble than usual, even in his boozy life on the edge. A certain underworld boss named the Captain holds his gambling marker to the tune of £500. He can avoid dire physical consequences, the Captain informs him, if he'll harness his well-known investigative talents and locate the Captain's kidnapped niece. Whitty signs on but soon has reason to wish he'd shipped for America. In short order, he's framed, jailed, repeatedly beaten and nearly hanged (twice). On the other hand, he meets a fictionalized version of Lewis Carroll and the delightfully Alice-like child he adores. In the end, undeserving though Whitty clearly is, he manages once again to beat the odds, nail his villain and come up smiling in Plant's Inn, a favored watering hole for ink-stained wretches. Teeming with Dickensian reprobates, an elegantly written, artfully mischievous romp.

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