Présentation de l'éditeur
A stuffed bear, a pet mouse, fraud and felony on the streets of London, and strange goings-on in the fens... Full of suspense and teeming with life, Kept is a Victorian mystery about the curious things men do to get - and keep - what they want. August 1863. Henry Ireland, a failed landowner, dies unexpectedly in a riding accident, and his young widow disappears. Three years later his friend James Dixey, a celebrated naturalist, is found dead on his grounds with his throat torn out. Are these deaths connected? What has happened to Mrs Ireland? And what are the sinister bonds that link these men to the poaching of osprey eggs in Scotland, the doomned romance of Dixey's kitchen maid and the first Great Train Robbery?
Revue de presse
A gripping tale, crafted with passion, and intelligence, and an honourable addendum to the golden age of the English novel -- Simon Baker ―
New Statesman
A genuinely fascinating reading experience... A pageturner of the highest order. It is a genuine mystery - not a simple whodunnit but a constant revelation of a complex and tight-knit plot -- Philippa Gregory ―
The Times
He has a faultless ear for the varied nuances of mid-Victorian English... [and] takes a wicked pleasure in creating a dense underlay of references, a blend of historical fact and other authors' fiction which lies beneath his narrative and occasionally erupts into it... Clever and hugely readable -- Andrew Taylor ―
Independent
Taylor's skill ensures the book never loses its grip... Hugely enjoyable...Conan Doyle, Dickens and Wilkie Collins knew how to do it, and Taylor has learned his lesson well... A great read. It intrigues, diverts and delights. It is clever and intricate and huge fun -- Susan Hill ―
Guardian
Taylor is marking out a territory as distinct and disturbing as Greenland, with the same imperative towards moral inquisition and a flatlands melancholy that is all his own -- Hilary Mantel ―
Sunday Times
Biographie de l'auteur
D.J. Taylor's novels include
English Settlement, which won a Grinzane Cavour Prize,
Trespass and
Derby Day, both of which were long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and
Kept: A Victorian Mystery. His other books include
After the War: The Novel and England Since 1945,
Thackeray,
Orwell: The Life, which won the 2003 Whitbread Biography Prize, and
Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation 1918–1940. He lives in Norwich with his wife, the novelist Rachel Hore, and their three sons.
