The Shape of Darkness

April 19, 2021
A Victorian silhouette artist investigates a mystery with the help of a medium in the suspenseful latest from Purcell (The House of Whispers). With photography rapidly supplanting the art of the silhouette, Agnes Darken is barely making ends meet in Bath, England. Then a client is murdered immediately after sitting for her, and another is found drowned nearby. Agnes fears the deaths are related and becomes overwhelmed with guilt, believing her “gaze has cast a shadow over them.” Her doctor brother-in-law, Simon Carfax, dismisses her concerns, but more of Agnes’s clients successively wind up dead. Purcell shifts point of view between Agnes and Pearl Meers, a half-starved 11-year-old living in the poorer part of Bath who possesses the ability to channel the dead. Pearl’s half-sister, Myrtle, is a mesmerist intent on maximizing profits from her sister’s “gift.” Eventually, the three meet and Agnes forms a pact with Pearl: Agnes will ask Simon to help Pearl’s father (dying horribly from phosphorus poisoning) if Pearl will help her find answers about who is killing her clients and why. What the two unearth leads to a shocking ending. Purcell convincingly describes the grime and poverty in Bath, an appropriate backdrop to the story’s tragedy and horror. Fans of gothic fiction will devour this.

June 4, 2021

Purcell's latest (after The House of Whispers), set in Bath in the 1800s, focuses on the tragic luck of silhouette artist Agnes Darken, whose clients begin to die after sitting for her portraits. Eager to find the killer, and save her meager stream of income, Agnes requests the help of an 11-year-old medium named Pearl and her half-sister Myrtle, a mesmerist. The sisters initially embrace Agnes's request for help, as they barter for assistance with their ailing father's health needs from Agnes's brother-in-law Simon, a doctor. After Simon's house call reveals concerns about the household, Agnes and Pearl meet in secret to try and advance the case. As more victims appear, and Agnes's nephew Cedric is kidnapped, she begins to wonder if she is, somehow, foretelling these murders. Has her own fragile health opened a gateway to the beyond? The appearance of her former fianc� complicates matters even further, forcing Agnes to decide whom she can save, and how. VERDICT This is a well-crafted Gothic tale, complete with a compulsive mystery and the visceral medical details of Emma Donoghue's The Pull of the Stars.--Tina Panik, Avon Free P.L., CT

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2021
Agnes Darken, weakened after an accident and a bout with pneumonia, barely ekes out a living cutting silhouettes in Victorian-era Bath, where she lives with her elderly mother and young nephew, awaiting news of her first love, who is in the navy. When her sitters start winding up murdered, she's afraid something supernatural is at play. Pearl is an 11-year-old albino living with her older sister, Myrtle, and working as a spirit medium called the White Sylph. She agrees to help Agnes--behind Myrtle's back, for free--if Agnes will help her contact her dead mother. Purcell's latest, after The House of Whipsers (2020), is a gaslamp gothic novel that captures the less glamorous corners of Bath, the dark dampness of genteel poverty, and the nineteenth-century obsession with spiritualism. Agnes and Pearl are both troubled narrators and, as the story unfolds, it becomes clear one is outright unreliable. Purcell builds sympathy for her characters and then, with deft plot twists, keeps readers guessing until the explosive ending. Suggest to readers of dark historical mystery and horror.

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