The Angel of Highgate

At the start of this dull crime novel set in 1859 from Entwistle (The Dead Assassin), Lord Geoffrey Thraxton, reputed to be the "wickedest man in London," has sex in Highgate Cemetery with a prostitute who's lying in a coffin pretending to be a corpse. Later, on Wimbledon Common, the dissolute nobleman fights a duel with a literary critic, whom he deliberately shoots in the buttocks as the man flees. At the scene of the duel, Thraxton also manages to offend Silas Garrette, the sadistic doctor who was there to attend any wounded. Garrette, who hires vicious thugs to get him deformed fetal specimens harvested from the dead, resolves to take his revenge on Thraxton. Garrette is more cartoonish than menacing, and readers will struggle to sympathize with Thraxton, despite a maudlin ending in which he's redeemed by love. Agent: Kimberley Cameron, Kimberley Cameron and Associates. (Dec.)