- Hardcover: 368 pages
- Publisher: Viking USA (Sep 12 2006)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0670034983
- ISBN-13: 978-0670034987
- Product Dimensions: 22.6 x 15.5 x 3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 91 g
- Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #928,010 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Sharply etched characters who owe a lot to the darker side of Dickens lift Brodrick's sequel to his well-received debut, The Sixth Lamentation (2003), which introduced Father Anselm, an English lawyer turned monk. Unfortunately, many of the descriptive scenes—a homeless man endlessly sharing toast and hot chocolate with a shrewd London female barrister for whom he acts as an informant, for example—start off with poignant power, but eventually become just padding. At the time of her death by heart attack, this highly principled woman, Elizabeth Glendinning, was trying to correct a miscarriage of justice that she and Father Anselm had been involved in when he was still a lawyer. A convicted sex criminal was set free who had always proclaimed his innocence and blamed the crimes on his employer, known only as "The Pieman," whose identity has never been revealed to readers—until now. Brodrick has all the right moves, but fewer slices of toast would have made for a tighter plot. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Many novelists working in crime try to deepen readers' involvement by always upping the ante: more bodies, more gore, more misery. Brodrick, a monk-turned-barrister whose hero, Father Anselm, is a barrister-turned-monk, does the opposite with riveting results. When Elizabeth Glendinning dies suddenly, she leaves behind a tangle of mysterious directions but one overriding imperative: "Leave it to Anselm." Anselm plays out his friend and former associate's complex but flawed scheme, learning that her last acts were attempts to undo a long-ago evil and discovering even more than she'd meant him to. Though wise, Anselm is no supersleuth, rather "shy and boyish, as if he were on his way to the podium to pick up the diligence prize after all the clever children had returned to their seats." And Brodrick's England is a somber place that stands somehow out of time, lending an allegorical quality to the several journeys here. But Brodrick gains remarkable power from the life-or-death seriousness with which he treats his characters' moral travails, of the urgent value he places on something often ignored in crime fiction--their souls. With just his second novel (The 6th Lamentation, 2003), Brodrick already writes like a master. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
"... the trial took a wrong turn and no one noticed.",
By Amanda Richards (Georgetown, Guyana) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (HALL OF FAME) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Gardens Of The Dead (Hardcover)
To be perfectly honest, reading this novel was a trial. I haven't read the author's first book "The Sixth Lamentation", but from somewhere around chapter six, I was lamenting the fact that I'd started reading it at all. The best word to describe it is "dreary".None of the characters come to life, or HAVE lives for that matter, and none are even remotely likeable. The story goes on and on in circles, covering and recovering the same scenarios over and over again. There's the barrister (Anselm) who chucked the bench for a monastery, and who finds himself in the middle of a mission to correct the wrongs of a trial that took place years before. The chain of events is started by his former colleague, Elizabeth Glendinning, who takes great pains to lay out a tortuous scheme related to a closed case just before she dies by natural and foreseen causes. Said scheme includes her son, with whom she hasn't seen eye to eye for a while, and a motley collection of characters related to the case. Back and forth we go, between a long suffering lawyer, a homeless man with a dark past, a young man with a darker past, and an assortment of female characters of various ages that become difficult to keep track of as the story progresses. The one character that could have saved this is the elusive "Pieman", who unfortunately is never allowed to play a significant role in the slowly unfolding drama. Devoted fans of literature may use words such as "allegorical", "moral", "spiritual" and intellectual" to describe this one, but in my personal and considered opinion, I'd say "convoluted", "slow" and "not-the-kind-of-novel-to-read-if-you're-looking-for-a-good-tight-mystery" Leave this one to fans of serious literary works, and people who like to ponder. Amanda Richards
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.4 out of 5 stars (16 customer reviews) 7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
"... the trial took a wrong turn and no one noticed.",
By Amanda Richards - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Gardens Of The Dead (Mass Market Paperback)
To be perfectly honest, reading this novel was a trial. I haven't read the author's first book "The Sixth Lamentation", but from somewhere around chapter six, I was lamenting the fact that I'd started reading it at all. The best word to describe it is "dreary".None of the characters come to life, or HAVE lives for that matter, and none are even remotely likeable. The story goes on and on in circles, covering and recovering the same scenarios over and over again. There's the barrister (Anselm) who chucked the bench for a monastery, and who finds himself in the middle of a mission to correct the wrongs of a trial that took place years before. The chain of events is started by his former colleague, Elizabeth Glendinning, who takes great pains to lay out a tortuous scheme related to a closed case just before she dies by natural and foreseen causes. Said scheme includes her son, with whom she hasn't seen eye to eye for a while, and a motley collection of characters related to the case. Back and forth we go, between a long suffering lawyer, a homeless man with a dark past, a young man with a darker past, and an assortment of female characters of various ages that become difficult to keep track of as the story progresses. The one character that could have saved this is the elusive "Pieman", who unfortunately is never allowed to play a significant role in the slowly unfolding drama. Devoted fans of literature may use words such as "allegorical", "moral", "spiritual" and intellectual" to describe this one, but in my personal and considered opinion, I'd say "convoluted", "slow" and "not-the-kind-of-novel-to-read-if-you're-looking-for-a-good-tight-mystery" Leave this one to fans of serious literary works, and people who like to ponder. Amanda Richards, February 20, 2008 7 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Poetic Tapestry,
By Tulip - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Gardens Of The Dead (Hardcover)
This story is intricately crafted, and skillfully told. The intellectual and spiritual themes that run through the story transend the typical mystery novel genre. Brodrick's heavy use of metaphor and simile creates poetic prose (I love this; it may not be to everyone's taste). The story unfolds through several different characters--each a strand of different colored thread--so at first it seems impossible that all of the characters and events will come together to provide a cohesive conclusion. At the end, the full tapestry comes into view, and the beauty of the complete work becomes apparent. Days after having finished the book, I still find myself reflecting back on it.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Secrets and lies,
By Linda Pagliuco "katknit" - Published on Amazon.com
William Brodrick follows his brilliant debut novel, The 6th Lamentation, with another Father Anselm mystery, Gardens of the Dead. Before her untimely death, a former colleague of Anselm's, Elizabeth Glendinning, QC, reopened a case on which they both had worked a decade before. Glendinning left some rather cryptic instructions, along with a key, asking Anselm to complete her work. The case involved that of one Graham Riley, a shady wheeler-dealer who had been accused of pimping but was released due to lack of compelling evidence. Why Elizabeth chose to saddle Anselm with a blind investigation, rather than simply leave an account of what she had now turned up is a perplexing question, but on that fulcrum the plot revolves. What follows is a mystery that is equally perplexing, with several memorable characters who are both more and less than what they seem. The most interesting of these is Riley's wife, Nancy, who has more heart and humanity than virtually anyone else in the book except Anselm. That is not to say that she is unflawed, nothing of the sort. But as a writer, Brodrick is outstanding in his ability to populate his complex plots with fully realized, genuine characters with all-too-human virtues and faults. While Gardens lacks the intensity of Lamentation, it has a moral and spiritual dimensions all its own.
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