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A review by tessanne
The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife, and the Missing Corpse: An Extraordinary Edwardian Case of Deception and Intrigue by Piu Marie Eatwell
4.0
This book was a TRIP. I was about 2/3 finished with it and decided to tell my teen about it, how wacky it was, how real it was, and some of the bizarre people involved. Multiple times her jaw dropped and rightly so!
So there’s this unmarried duke who’s kinda sickly and very reclusive back in the 1800s. He has some quirks and built a load of underground rooms and tunnels and lived on his estate.
There was also this dude, Druce, same time period. He has a bunch of kids then leaves his family for London where he is very successful and hooks up with another lady and has a bunch more kids. He also has some quirks, and wouldn’t you know it, he and the duke are never seen in the same place at the same time.
Eventually multiple people try to claim descent from the duke so they can get that inheritance and it all hinges on opening up Druce’s coffin, which for numerous legal reasons just doesn’t happen. Until eventually it does after the story is a global sensation.
It’s all pretty wild. Loads of characters—and I do mean characters—play into this story. The first 70ish percent of the book felt like it was written decades ago with sometimes bizarre vocabulary and sentence structure. Then you learn it was written by a lawyer and that explains a bit. But then the last 30% is super accessible and about the author’s time researching and it’s waaaay better written than the beginning.
She seems to have tried to do something gothic to make it more interesting, but all she really did was make it weirder and drudgey.
Still, I’m rounding my 3.5 stars to four because it is that trippy and interesting.
So there’s this unmarried duke who’s kinda sickly and very reclusive back in the 1800s. He has some quirks and built a load of underground rooms and tunnels and lived on his estate.
There was also this dude, Druce, same time period. He has a bunch of kids then leaves his family for London where he is very successful and hooks up with another lady and has a bunch more kids. He also has some quirks, and wouldn’t you know it, he and the duke are never seen in the same place at the same time.
Eventually multiple people try to claim descent from the duke so they can get that inheritance and it all hinges on opening up Druce’s coffin, which for numerous legal reasons just doesn’t happen. Until eventually it does after the story is a global sensation.
It’s all pretty wild. Loads of characters—and I do mean characters—play into this story. The first 70ish percent of the book felt like it was written decades ago with sometimes bizarre vocabulary and sentence structure. Then you learn it was written by a lawyer and that explains a bit. But then the last 30% is super accessible and about the author’s time researching and it’s waaaay better written than the beginning.
She seems to have tried to do something gothic to make it more interesting, but all she really did was make it weirder and drudgey.
Still, I’m rounding my 3.5 stars to four because it is that trippy and interesting.