Obadiah Grange
The novel is set in London in 1825 and opens with the detective Robert Hesketh discovering the dead body of a young girl washed up on the shore of the Thames. On her body he finds a handbill for a waxwork fairground show. Hesketh decides to enlist the help of the thirteen-year-old Charles Dickens, who he had previously encountered in Braun’s novel Hungerford Stairs and, having been impressed by the boy’s precocious mind, funded his schooling. Anxious to do all they can to assist, and hungry for adventure, Charles and his friend Mary Ann are persuaded to visit and investigate the mysterious waxwork show and find themselves drawn into a network of child abuse and corruption at the highest level.
Thom Braun creates a Dickensian world of larger-than-life characters and a suitably Micawberish and theatrical father, albeit with a modern multiracial slant. Although the author’s writing contains the occasional unexpected shift in point of view, he gets inside the head of the young Dickens well, showing him growing to maturity and accumulating some of the experiences that shaped the great writer. This is definitely a novel for anyone who loves Dickens, containing many echoes of his novels.
