Do yourself a favour and pick up a novel by Christopher Fowler. The author's Bryant and May series is proving to be one of the quirkiest and most ingenious pleasures to be found in the genre: atmospheric, sardonically funny and craftily suspenseful.

Davis is a prolific and popular writer … Her research has been assiduous and detailed, her commitment to the subject is impressive, and the background detail is often eye-opening

One of the best of the current writers in this field

Surely the best historical detective in the business

The whole thing is splendid. It has everything: mystery, pace wit, fascinating scholarship … she brings imperial Rome to life

Storytelling doesn't get much better than this. I've set this one aside to read again!

A writer of extraordinary imagination

The striking gothic setting of London under fire proves fruitful ground for a bizarre dark comedy of an investigation... bawdy, unpredictable and at times hilarious, with a cast of wonderful grotesques

Fowler belongs with the mythographers of London: Iain Sinclair, Peter Ackroyd

Its combination of Grand Guignol and place setting does command attention

Superbly realised... reminds us that the real horrors lurk within the reader's mind

Pears is in a class of his own; no one else could possibly succeed in making the world of big finance so hugely entertaining.

this thoughtful, thoroughly satisfying novel... clever storytelling to reach imaginative heights