Author: Anthony O’Neill
Cover Artist: Katie Mitchell
Publisher: Scribner
Binding: Hardcover
Publication Date: 2003
The orphaned Evelyn Todd lives in Edinburgh’s Fountainbridge Institute for Destitute Girls, run by the grim Calvinist, Mr Lindsay. She’s recalcitrant girl with a highland spirit. One day Lindsay stops his efforts to suppress her imaginative, artistic tendencies and allows her free reign. This might be because her long-lost father (the Laird of Millenhall no less) suddenly appears to collect her.
Playfully blindfolded, she’s taken to the ancestral home and locked in her room. She’s comfortable, though, and allowed to draw. Slowly she comes to realise that she’s a prisoner, and that the people she’s with aren’t her parents at all. She’s comforted somewhat by her imaginary friend, Leerie, the lamplighter.
Twenty years later, a series of brutal murders terrifies Victorian Edinburgh (O’Neill does a wonderful job in his description of the city – fans of historical fiction will eat it up). Two separate investigations commence independently of the other.
The first is the official investigation, by police inspector Carus Groves, a stuffy and sententious memorialist (the book is peppered with references to the memoirs he’s writing for his retirement). Long in the shadow of his superior, who gets the high-profile cases, Groves worries about being out of his depth. He finds that the highest echelons of the city are taking an interest in his investigation.
All of the murders are done in such a grisly way as to lead to the conclusion that the killer is a beast or a man of supernatural strength.
The second investigation is by the skeptic Thomas McKnight, Professor of Logic and Metaphysics. McKnight is disillusioned by his career, and rather impoverished. He relies heavily on Joseph Canavan, his self-educated Irish friend and foil. The pair are a bit like Holmes and Watson (this is probably part of the reason that the book is set in Edinburgh, not London).
When a fellow professor and rival of McKnight is murdered, his interest in the slayings is piqued. While Groves is doing a lot of footwork, McKnight is working more from metaphysical deductions (in fact, there’s some hand-waving going on to distract you during a few of his leaps of intuition).
Both Groves and McKnight start to encounter a young woman – the grown-up Evelyn – who has dreamt of the slayings. Both suspect that she knows more about the killings than she’s telling them.
The Lamplighter is a Gothic, supernatural mystery, with strong philosophical and psychological components running through it. O’Neill does a great job of establishing his setting without making it cliché. And he’s introduced a new and fascinating subculture of 19th century society for our delight – the lamplighters who nightly activate the city’s gas lamps. I was interested to learn of their habits and concerns (damn electric lights!).
O’Neill’s book is an atmospheric evocation of a city, and his story is an engrossing page-turner. As you progress through the book you find yourself drawn in to the questions of who and what the killer is, whether the answer is to be found in psychology or philosophy … or demonology.
The book has a series of revelatory moments, and it’s one I’ll enjoy rereading to appreciate the skill of the author in crafting his mystery.
