Affecting, frightening and, especially in Frost's dialogue, extremely amusing

A crisp, confident, ripely-characterized novel; exciting, ingenious, roundly satisfying

He has a faultless ear for the varied nuances of mid-Victorian English... [and] takes a wicked pleasure in creating a dense underlay of references, a blend of historical fact and other authors' fiction which lies beneath his narrative and occasionally erupts into it... Clever and hugely readable

Taylor's skill ensures the book never loses its grip... Hugely enjoyable...Conan Doyle, Dickens and Wilkie Collins knew how to do it, and Taylor has learned his lesson well... A great read. It intrigues, diverts and delights. It is clever and intricate and huge fun

Taylor is marking out a territory as distinct and disturbing as Greenland, with the same imperative towards moral inquisition and a flatlands melancholy that is all his own

Intricate and vividly realised

Taylor is utterly enthralling

Intricate and vividly realised...a pin-sharp recreation of 19th-century life

Taylor has a lot of fun with his premise, and readers should too

Taylor] creates a vivid, kaleidoscopic world that constantly shifts before the reader's eyes

Robert Harris's bullet-paced thriller... [It's] impossible to put this book down

An elegant and highly readable thriller

Harris's feel for political manoeuvring is buttressed by a strong sense of place and good fast pacing which the craftsman sustains to the final page

Intelligent, perceptive and enormous fun

The most fun I've had with a novel in ages

Knee-deep in intrigue and bristling with incident... An edgy journey through the dark corridors of power, a witty portrait of political and literary falsehoods, and a masterclass in gripping storytelling, Harris's dynamic novel is a page-turner of the old school.

A contender for top thriller of 2010

A turbo-charged page-flipper: you're on page 300 before you take a breath...Child is a master of distances, spaces and the physics of opposing forces