Reviewed by DAVID VINEYARD:         


MICHAEL COX – The Glass of Time. W. W. Norton & Company, hardcover, October 2008; softcover, October 2009.

        “Make ’em laugh, make ’em cry, make ’em wait.”

   That was Wilkie Collins’ formula for the nineteenth century thriller of the triple-decker variety, and here and in his previous Victorian thriller, The Meaning of Night, Michael Cox more than follows Collins’ advice. There are perhaps fewer laughs, though, in this dark tale of revenge across time and one young woman’s mysterious “Great Task.”

   Her name is Esperanza Alice Gorst, and she has recently arrived at Evenhood where she will enter service as maid to the rather liberal Miss Emily Carteret 26th Baroness of Transor and her sons, Perseus and Randolph Duport.

   Esperanza is no ladies maid, though. She was raised by her guardian Madame in Mansion de l’Orme in France, and only two months earlier she had learned it was her role in something called the Great Task to befriend and grow close to Lady Transor. She does not know why, only that her past is leading her here and her future turns on her success.

   And Lady Transor is something in herself:

   She sits at the head of the board as a queen ought, in black and shimmering silver silk. Who can deny she is beautiful still … Beautiful, romantically scarred by tragedy, the possessor of an immense fortune and an ancient title — and now a widow … She is far too great a prize, perhaps one of the greatest prizes in England.

   Esperanza’s work would seem cut out for her, for how could a mere maid seduce such a woman of beauty and wealth. Unknown to Esperanza, it will be much easier than she knows, because she has special gifts and advantages she is ignorant of as yet. She cannot know all the intricacies of the Great Task yet, lest she fail.

   Esperanza will rise from maid to companion to daughter in-law to something far higher through the twists and turns, dangers, insanity, and mysteries of this modern triple-decker, with allies and enemies both known and unknown, sympathies, confusion, passion, and cool intellect all spun masterfully out by Cox in an effectively Victorian voice that never-the-less is an easy and pleasant read. There is little to forgive in this novel or his previous book The Meaning of Night, and much to applaud.

   The literary thriller, of which this is a good example, follows two chief tracks, the contemporary version with ties to the past, usually in the form of a valuable object or artifact, The Book of Four; and the historical version, The Name of the Rose.

   This falls in the latter category and manages to evoke not only Wilkie Collins, J. Sheridan LeFanu, and Mary Elizabeth Brandon, but also a touch of Alexandre Dumas and The Count of Monte Cristo, since at heart The Glass of Time is about old injustices, mysterious figures with new identities, lost fortunes, young love, and implacable revenge. Don’t think this will be too dated though. Cox is a masterful story teller and a gifted writer.

   A widening strand of the palest, purist light is breaking over the Eastern horizon as the bells of St. Michael’s begin to ring out. I hear the sound but cannot tell which hour, or half hour, they are proclaiming. It almost seems as if the flow of time has ceased, replaced by a perpetual present moment, poised between life and death.

   Esperanza is no delicate fainting flower. Despite her innocence she is smart, tough, and ruthless when need be. This is not Little Nell. She proves not only Lady Transor’s equal, but her nemesis, though no one is simply good or evil, nothing simply black and white. This isn’t Rebecca unless there had been two Rebecca’s battling for Manderlay; if it resembles any works from the past it would perhaps be one of the Joseph Shearing novels like Moss Rose, So Evil My Love, or Blanche Fury.

   The Meaning of Night was a hard act to follow, being a variation on Kind Hearts and Coronets, but Cox succeeds admirably with a book that manages to be similar enough to reward those who loved the earlier novel and totally different in its protagonist and her plight.

   I’m deliberately not giving too much away because there are twists and turns and surprises enough to come. If I’ve made it sound stately or dull it is not. It moves, it’s a compulsive page turner, it breathes and lives, the characters are genuine people from heroine to the slightest character, and the setting is splendidly evoked even down to a final revelation on virtually the last page that will likely come as a complete surprise to most readers.

   You won’t find the best of the mystery genre in the mystery section of bookstores today, but among the mainstream novels by talented and canny writers such as Michael Cox. No one does the literary pastiche better or more artfully. This and his first book would be completely at home beside The Woman in White, Uncle Silas, or The Mystery of Edwin Drood.