Hawksmoor - Softcover

Ackroyd, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014104201X ISBN 13: 9780141042015

Publisher: Penguin, 2010

'There is no Light without Darknesse
and no Substance without Shaddowe'

So proclaims Nicholas Dyer, assistant to Sir Christopher Wren and the man with a commission to build seven London churches to stand as beacons of the enlightenment. But Dyer plans to conceal a dark secret at the heart of each church - to create a forbidding architecture that will survive for eternity. Two hundred and fifty years later, London detective Nicholas Hawksmoor is investigating a series of gruesome murders on the sites of certain eighteenth-century churches - crimes that make no sense to the modern mind . . .

'Chillingly brilliant . . . sinister and stunningly well executed' Independent on Sunday

Peter Ackroyd was born in London in 1949. A novelist, biographer and historian, he has been the literary editor of The Spectator and chief book reviewer for the The Times, as well as writing several highly acclaimed books including a biography of Dickens and London: The Biography. He lives in London.

Review:

Chillingly brilliant . . . sinister and stunningly well executed (Independent on Sunday)

Extraordinary, amazing, vivid, convincing. [Ackroyd's] view of life questions the role not just of the novel but of art and history, memory, time and much else (Financial Times)

A novel remarkable for [its] power, ingenuity and subtlety (London Review of Books)

From the Back Cover:

With a new introduction by Will Self

Winner of the Whitbread Book Award and Guardian Fiction Prize in 1985

'There is no Light without Darknesse
and no Substance without Shaddowe'

So proclaims Nicholas Dyer, assistant to Sir Christopher Wren and the man with a commission to build seven London churches to stand as beacons of the enlightenment. But Dyer plans to conceal a dark secret at the heart of each church - to create a forbidding architecture that will survive for eternity. Two hundred and fifty years later, London detective Nicholas Hawksmoor is investigating a series of gruesome murders on the sites of certain eighteenth-century churches - crimes that make no sense to the modern mind . . .

'Chillingly brilliant . . . sinister and stunningly well executed' Independent on Sunday

'Grips the imagination like an obsession' Guardian

'Extraordinary, amazing, vivid, convincing. Ackroyd's view of life questions the role not just of the novel but of art and history, memory, time and much else.' Financial Times

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 014104201X
• ISBN 13: 9780141042015
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288