A Fatal Likeness

Shepherd shines again in this superb Victorian thriller, a follow-up to 2012’s The Solitary House. A note from Sir Percy Shelley, son of the late Romantic poet, causes elderly Charles Maddox to have a fit of apoplexy. In the circumstances, Maddox’s great-nephew and namesake, who’s a private detective, responds to Sir Percy instead. The Shelley family hires the younger Maddox to prevent the poet’s former lover, Claire Clairmont, from tarnishing his posthumous reputation. When Charles discovers that his great-uncle worked for the family more than 30 years before, on tasks now excised from his relative’s meticulous case files, his quest takes on a personal urgency. Juxtaposing omniscient narration with discovered “documents,” the story moves between 1850 London and the tortured ménage that created Frankenstein in 1818 Italy. The novel works equally as a family story, a blend of horror and mystery, and as a plausible hypothesis about why so many women and children associated with Shelley died mysterious deaths. Agent: Ben Mason, Fox Mason. (Aug.)