historical-fiction-mystery

These were not the belongings of the past prisoner he had imagined. These were a lady__ things__airpins and stockings and a glove. There were more clues waiting but William no longer felt certain he wanted to know the dark secrets of this cell.

What was justice, after all, but a particular outcome?

Rooks have clustered on either side of the long road. It is as if they line a grand parade route for our passage. Their black feathers are stark as soot against the white road and the snow. They stab at the ground with their strange bare bills and gray unfeathered faces. The birds are like rough-edged black stones on a string around this stripped cold neck of road. The old books tell us rooks bring the virtuous dead to heaven__ gate.

Elsa's mother no longer spoke to her of men and love, but of duty and fate and accepting one__ burden. As far as Elsa could tell, if love really was the inherited female domain, then women were saddled with the biggest burden of all. It was pressing down upon them, the way the sea pressed down upon the creatures of the deep.

The engorged moon hung full and low in the sky like a yellow skull. Misshapen clouds stretched across the floating orb with elongated hands and bony fingers grasping. As they neared the docks, the gas lamps grew fewer and the streets gloomier. The cobblestones blackened as they passed the deserted brickfields. Bottle-shaped kilns spat their outrage with orange tongues of fire into the cooling air. Mangy dogs snarled in hunger and wandering sea-gulls screamed their displeasure at the hansom__ passage.

Yet, the quest for knowledge will overcome us and we must know. And, at last, we must see where the road ends, even if it be the cliff.

@The darkest and most complex novel in (the Murdoch) series.