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A review by jmatkinson1
Soot by Andrew Martin
4.0
Fletcher Rigge is in debtors prison in York. His father gambled away his estates and then committed suicide, Fletcher is clever but without money or support. Then a mysterious proposition is made. Fletcher will be released from gaol, his debts paid for one month, he must solve a murder and if he does so his debts will disappear forever. This benefactor is Captain Harvey son of the late victim, an artist who specialised in silhouettes, or shades as they are known. Fletcher realises that the clues to the orders identity lie in the last set of shades that Harvey created and so he is thrown into society in York and latterly London.
This is a clever book, written in the form of different notes or papers and with a number of different narrators. All of this means that the plot is not quite as clear cut as it could have been with a more straightforward single narrator. However, this is to the book's benefit, as one of the strengths is the complexity of the plot and the way that no single narrator is completely truthful, different perspectives of the same events are interpreted in different ways. In this way the metaphor about shades continues through the story. I loved the descriptions of life in Georgian York and the little details about the different characters added such a depth to the novel.
This is a clever book, written in the form of different notes or papers and with a number of different narrators. All of this means that the plot is not quite as clear cut as it could have been with a more straightforward single narrator. However, this is to the book's benefit, as one of the strengths is the complexity of the plot and the way that no single narrator is completely truthful, different perspectives of the same events are interpreted in different ways. In this way the metaphor about shades continues through the story. I loved the descriptions of life in Georgian York and the little details about the different characters added such a depth to the novel.