'Very, very true and touching... packs a huge emotional punch'

'Wildly imaginative and astonishingly exhilarating'

Through the quality of her writing she's raised the game of the crime novel in this country

Nothing less than show-stopping

A page-turner in the smartest possible sense, written with the historical authenticity and taut command of language that has established Irving as one of America's greatest living novelists

I was astounded by the power of the writing

A great book

Few novels in the last ten years have given me so much enjoyment

A novel of exceptional stature. One may claim for it classic status

A literary phenomenon on the grandest scale – a work of genius

Sublime and sweet melancholy suffuses the story. Beautiful

A delicate meditation on mortality, decay and the fading of beauty

Historical fiction at its best

No novel is perfect, but this small, wonderfully atmospheric and immensely poignant story...comes very close

Blisteringly angry..,begins as a black comedy but gradually turns much darker with the mad-as-hell narrator suspected of murdering his lovers in London

Sutton shows us everything through Freeman's eyes and he pulls it off very well indeed. A horrible character but a compelling narrator

Sutton shows us everything through Freeman's eyes and he pulls it off very well indeed

This darkly comic novel with it's brilliantly acute observations of life in London in the 21st Century completely captures the zeitgeist and raises more than a few laughs.

Gripping and darkly comic tale of 21st-century material greed