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Trust no one in this accomplished Victorian suspense novel.

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From: The Washington Post
Date: 20061001
Author:Michael Dirda

THE MEANING OF NIGHT

A Confession

By Michael Cox

Norton. 703 pp. $25.95Michael Cox's The Meaning of Night is the most recent example of what one might dub "Victorian noir." As in a 19th-century sensation novel -- think of Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, John Meade Falkner's The Nebuly Coat or even Charles Dickens's Bleak House -- its intricate plot turns on the question of who should rightfully inherit a great estate and a sizable fortune. Oaths of secrecy, matters of identity, cold-hearted revenge, relentless subterfuge and mysteries of all kinds play their considerable parts. At ...

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