'Immediately pleasurable... touching and suspenseful

This book is beautifully written, the characters intriguing

Fred D'Aguiar's powerful and original work employs all kinds of poetic rhythms and shapes to dramatise the dreams, struggles and desires of his protagonists. He has helped to create a new kind of novel... How beautifully D'Aguiar writes about eroticism and sensuality. The novel is a paean to love lost and found again

Evocative

D'Aguiar's forte is in getting under the skin of his character... an ambitious novel

A magical tale full of potent emotion

His sentences glow with poetry, creating pictures that stay with the reader

Taylor's great skill is in characterisation... In this accomplished work [he] has effectively captured the mutable nature of this unsettling period

Enjoyable, intelligent and thoroughly entertaining... Highly recommended

[Taylor's] prose is note-perfect and seems completely natural...Better still, he never forgets the 'mystery' part of that promise on the cover. As the great race approaches, the many strands of the story come together in a way that's wholly satisfying and exciting

Taylor wears his research lightly but there is no doubt how much effort he has expended... The whole is an engaging drama - escapism of the highest standard

Taylor manages to successfully pastiche a 19th-century mystery novel with this fast paced, enjoyable read

This is a book to read by the fireside, to be swept along in, to realise - with a start - that hours have gone by...In other words, to rediscover the lost-in-another-world joy of reading. And this book really IS a joy...my favourite book of the year so far

A delicious, highly intelligent page-turner... With clever, confident plotting and meticulous period details, this is an engrossing and deeply satisfying read

As you would expect from somebody steeped in Victorian fictional history, Taylor rarely puts a foot wrong...the colourful events which take place on the Downs should delight any racing enthusiast

Taylor’s love and understanding of Victorian melodrama is put to good use in this tangibly detailed and deliciously written pastiche centred on an Epsom Derby swindle

This is a fictional world in which daughters are ready to bump off their fathers, husbands to exploit their wives, and everyone is happy to chance their assets on the wheel of fortune. It’s a novel that will keep you gripped until the very last furlong

It is a detective story as gripping as the Victorian novels that inspired it, and is written with narrative flair and a terrific sense of fun

Derby Day will be hard to put down... As ever with Taylor, literary complexities lurk under the smooth surface of a stylish page-turner

De Witt has intelligence, wit and unusual stylistic bravery

An ambitious, colossal debut novel

DeWitt pushes enjoyably but firmly against (and sometimes beyond) the unknown capabilities of the reader