Dangerous (A Lord Byron Mystery)
A new Essie Fox novel is always a delight because she creates immersive and unique settings laced with gothic. Previous novels have featured a London brothel and a Windsor fairground. Dangerous is no exception. The title plays wonderfully with the saying that its scandalous hero, Lord Byron, was ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’.
In 1800s Venice, following his forced flight from London after a lovers’ scandal, Byron must turn detective to establish who is framing him for murdering prostitutes and young women in the city’s shadowy back streets. All the victims have mysterious marks on their necks: a clever nod to Byron’s own real-life inspiration for a vampire novel by the author John Polidori, who also features in Dangerous, causing Byron to question whom he can trust.
Another lovely homage to Byron is the use of his poems as chapter headings. Fox is an author who understands her main character and lifts the history book version onto the page without it ever feeling didactic. Fox’s prose evokes the ‘Floating City’ with a skilful blend of fact and fiction, so the reader wanders amidst its damp crumbling palazzo walls and murky canals.
Fox applies a deft hand when writing gothic – this novel, whilst not overly ‘bloody’, deals with some darker themes, yet the darkness oozes off the page without the need for some of the genre’s more simplistic tropes. She has the reader rooting for our infamous hero whilst never sugar-coating the darker side of his character and actions.
This masterfully written novel is a literary page-turner that doesn’t reveal its secrets until the last moment, and one can only hope that similar novels featuring Byron will follow – as hinted in the subtitle (‘A Lord Byron Mystery’). Don’t let this evocative, captivating historical mystery pass you by.
