The Lamplighter

Evelyn is a clever orphan at the Fountainbridge Institute for Destitute Girls. Enchanted by a cheerful lamplighter who fires the streetlamp outside her window each evening, she mesmerizes the other girls with flights of fancy. In a time before Freudian awareness of sexuality and the subconscious mind, such tales are forbidden by the institute's governor, who warns Evelyn to cease her nocturnal storytelling.

Evelyn defies him -- and is cast out of the orphanage and sacrificed to a shadowy figure claiming to be her long-lost father. Who is this man, and why does he lock Evelyn away in a hunting lodge?

Years later, the mutilated body of a professor of ecclesiastical law turns up on one of Edinburgh's finest streets; the grave of a famous colonel is ravaged; a shady entrepreneur is slaughtered while dashing for a train; and a retired lighthouse keeper is ripped to shreds while walking his dog -- all this after Evelyn, now a young woman, has reappeared in the city. What connects the victims? And what of Evelyn, anguished and appealing, who repeatedly claims to have dreamed the murders in great detail -- each time blaming a mysterious "lamplighter"?

Leading the official investigation is Carus Groves, a conceited yet effective police inspector desperate to cap his unremarkable career with a sensational case. Heading up the unofficial investigation is a disillusioned professor of logic and metaphysics, Thomas McKnight, and his assistant, Joseph Canavan, a strapping young gravedigger. Using reason, intuition, philosophy, and luck, these men race to solve the murders and unveil the source of Evelyn's torment, and in so doing penetrate the very gates of Hell.

An atmospheric thriller set in nineteenth-century Edinburgh, Anthony O'Neill's elegant, darkly masterful novel is full of psychological suspense and first-rate horror.

Evelyn is a clever orphan at the Fountainbridge Institute for Destitute Girls. Enchanted by a cheerful lamplighter who fires the streetlamp outside her window each evening, she mesmerizes the other girls with flights of fancy. In a time before Freudian awareness of sexuality and the subconscious mind, such tales are forbidden by the institute's governor, who warns Evelyn to cease her nocturnal storytelling.

Evelyn defies him -- and is cast out of the orphanage and sacrificed to a shadowy figure claiming to be her long-lost father. Who is this man, and why does he lock Evelyn away in a hunting lodge?

Years later, the mutilated body of a professor of ecclesiastical law turns up on one of Edinburgh's finest streets; the grave of a famous colonel is ravaged; a shady entrepreneur is slaughtered while dashing for a train; and a retired lighthouse keeper is ripped to shreds while walking his dog -- all this after Evelyn, now a young woman, has reappeared in the city. What connects the victims? And what of Evelyn, anguished and appealing, who repeatedly claims to have dreamed the murders in great detail -- each time blaming a mysterious "lamplighter"?

Leading the official investigation is Carus Groves, a conceited yet effective police inspector desperate to cap his unremarkable career with a sensational case. Heading up the unofficial investigation is a disillusioned professor of logic and metaphysics, Thomas McKnight, and his assistant, Joseph Canavan, a strapping young gravedigger. Using reason, intuition, philosophy, and luck, these men race to solve the murders and unveil the source of Evelyn's torment, and in so doing penetrate the very gates of Hell.

Publishers Weekly

Australian novelist O'Neill (Scheherazade) tips his hat to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with his own spellbinding tale of a soul divided. Set in the late 19th century in Robert Louis Stevenson's native Edinburgh, the novel follows Evelyn Todd, an excitable young woman whose arrival in the city coincides with a wave of savage murders. Bloody corpses turn up on the main thoroughfares, with ominous messages left near the remains. The city's expert sleuth is away in London, and the aging Insp. Carus Groves finally has an opportunity to step up his unremarkable career, if only he could figure out how to conduct a homicide investigation. The real sleuthing is done by Thomas McKnight and his young friend Joseph Canavan. They're not detectives by trade, but having recently lost their jobs as logic professor and cemetery watchman, respectively, they have the time and wits to pursue the killer. All paths lead to the seemingly respectable Evelyn, who works for a bookbinder. She has been suffering from nightmares in which she has precise visions of the murders as they unfold. Just what is her relationship to the slayings? The gripping climax reveals devastating events from Evelyn's childhood, beginning when she is plucked from an orphanage by a swindler claiming to be her father. O'Neill is a masterful storyteller with a thorough knowledge of both the urban life and the literary tropes of late 19th-century Britain and has created characters embodying the questions about good and evil, faith and fanaticism that preoccupied Stevenson's contemporaries. But readers won't pause too long to admire his erudition-the thrilling story will have them turning pages compulsively. (Mar.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Anthony O'Neill is the son of an Irish policeman and an Australian stenographer. He lives in Melbourne, Australia.