THIS fictional imagining of a fraught and bitter friendship between Wilkie Collins, author of The Woman In White, and Charles Dickens, looks set to be a bestseller.
Simmons’ latest novel is reportedly being turned into a film directed by Pan’s Labyrinth director, Guillermo del Toro.
In this sizeable tome, the initially friendly and professionally collaborating pair find themselves involved in a manhunt through the underworld of Victorian London.
As the chase becomes increasingly complicated, readers are forced to ask whether this is just a wild goosechase?
Simmons has constructed an exquisitely articulate treatise on paranoia. Blurred realities and misapprehensions brought about by arrogance, envy, madness, mind-control and drug-use push the literary giants towards seemingly unintelligible horrors.
Dean Haigh
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