The Lamplighter - Tapa blanda

As terrifying as a child's nightmares - and as wonderful as waking from
them

(Kirkus Reviews)

'As terrifying as a child's nightmares - and as wonderful as waking from
them' Kirkus Reviews

(Kirkus Reviews)

O'Neill's chillingly atmospheric story of evil and the power of the
imagination adds new terrors to the gothic, gas-lit depths of Edinburgh's
past. Follow his tale through these streets only if you dare. You may not
come back alive

(Stephen Booth, author of BLACK DOG and BLOOD ON TH)

'Stunning...O'Neill delivers one surprising denouement
after another in this assured novel...By turns genuinely frightening,
thought-provoking, and droll...it's an achievement worthy of Highsmith
herself' Book Forum

(Book Forum)

It's a remarkable work, full of erudition and beautifully written. It's also
the darkest thing I've read since Peter Ackroyd's HAWKSMOOR

(Quintin Jardine)

'It's a remarkable work, full of erudition and beautifully written. It's also
the darkest thing I've read since Peter Ackroyd's HAWKSMOOR' Quintin Jardine

(Quintin Jardine)

[A] spellbinding tale of a soul divided... O'Neill is a masterful storyteller (Publishers Weekly)

'O'Neill's chillingly atmospheric story of evil and the power of the
imagination adds new terrors to the gothic, gas-lit depths of Edinburgh's
past. Follow his tale through these streets only if you dare. You may not
come back alive' Stephen Booth, author of Black Dog and Blood on the
Tongue

(Stephen Booth)

'[A] spellbinding tale of a soul divided... O'Neill is a masterful storyteller' Publishers Weekly (starred review) (Publishers Weekly)

From the imaginative and eloquent pen of the author of SCHEHERAZADE comes a wonderfully sinister story of evil intent and possession in Victorian Edinburgh: the tormented psyche of a young woman holds the key to murder and exhumation (Bookseller)

In Edinburgh, 1886, two brutal murders and a bizarre exhumation have the entire city on edge. Carus Groves, a conceited and prejudiced police inspector, is assigned the case. Baffled by the superhuman strength required to rip two men apart and drag up a coffin, Groves focuses on an anguished young woman, Evelyn Todd, who claims to have dreamed of the crimes in great detail. Meanwhile, two unlikely friends - Thomas McKnight, a jaded Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, and Joseph Canavan, a compassionate cemetery attendant - are similarly drawn towards Evelyn and her tormented psyche. They discover her extraordinary imagination was violently suppressed in childhood, but in her dreams she retains the image of the lamplighter who brightened the street outside her orphanage each evening. Evelyn now insists the killer is this lamplighter. And as a strange beast gallops through Edinburgh's misty alleys, and Groves's investigation flounders, McKnight and Canavan use the only weapons they possess - reason, logic, intuition, philosophy and sheer luck - to unearth the secrets buried in the dark recesses of Evelyn's mind ...