Living in exile in Venice, the disgraced Lord Byron revels in the freedoms of the city.
But when he is associated with the deaths of local women, found with wounds to their throats, and then a novel called The Vampyre is published under his name, rumours begin to spread that Byron may be the murderer…
As events escalate and tensions rise – and his own life is endangered, as well as those he holds most dear – Byron is forced to play detective, to discover who is really behind these heinous crimes. Meanwhile, the scandals of his own infamous past come back to haunt him…
Rich in gothic atmosphere and drawing on real events and characters from Byron's life, Dangerous is a riveting, dazzling historical thriller, as decadent, dark and seductive as the poet himself…
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Essie Fox is a queen of a gothic literature. I loved her ghostly retelling of Wuthering Heights recently, and Dangerous is taking her own spin at the scandalous true life of Lord Byron, the alleged author of The Vampyr - that was supposedly actually written by John Polidori.
Here, Byron finds himself existing in a horror story that cannot just be closed like a book, one filled with bodies, secrets and fear - his secret history revealed from hidden memoirs. From the first line, this book gets its claws in you — rich, beautiful descriptions that paint vivid pictures of dark settings, establishing a mood of anticipation. The language feels like a time capsule, taking us to the 1930’s but keeping a high level of readability. It might take a minute to settle into the highly flowery prose but when you do, the pages fly by.
The story read like an amateur detective novel that was dropped into a gothic nightmare - a mixture that might not work for everyone if you're expecting fast thrills but for me, created something delicious tense and so enjoyable.
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