Book Review by Bud Gundy
Writing a historical novel is a minefield. As someone who wrote an unreadable, 400-page novel about the Restoration years in England, roughly 1659 – 1666, I can say with confidence the more you study, the more the historic record can defeat you. The temptation to anchor your writing with provable period detail can easily pound your story flat, with listless characters bumping from scene to scene with no direction or motive.
I recently finished Pursuit: A Victorian Entertainment by Felice Picano, and it’s always a thrill to read a confident writer who uses everyday details to touch his scenes with a sparkle of wonder, while the story carries you along without pause.
Picano’s hero Addison Grimmins is employed by Lord R., an earl who oddly skips his son’s wedding at his country estate. Addison serves as the earl’s eyes and ears at the sprawling event, and afterwards has the unhappy task of informing his lordship that Lady R. has vanished. Did she flee or was she kidnapped? Addison follows her faint path across the channel to the continent, until both hunter and prey circle each other cautiously in Italy.
Here, the melodrama of Victorian fiction flourishes, and a Dickensian encounter with a foe transforms into a reunion dripping with poignant regret and joy. But Picano won’t be outdone by Dickens, and gives us another reunion to savor, until it ends on the gory cobblestones of Florence.
And more adventures await the reader, with a journey through Addison’s youth complete with unsavory foster parents, a reimagined Fagin, and a ragtag troupe of actors both sexy and unhinged. No setback can flummox Addison, however, and he triumphs in the worlds of a male brothel, the chic if seething parties of the English peerage, and the frantic Victorian fascination with the supernatural. Even when cheated of everything, a twist I loved but didn’t remotely anticipate, Addison sets his gaze with calculation and wit on a world requiring precision of thought. A world that doesn’t deserve him.
Picano wins bonus points for the most garish death imaginable, a ghoulish demise at the base of a papery mountain. This is a story crackling with intrigue and filled with authenticity.
Given the many unanswered questions in Pursuit, I’m eagerly awaiting Picano’s next installment from the POV of Lady R., Pursued: Lillian’s Story scheduled for release by Bold Strokes Books on April 1, 2022.
You can purchase a e-version or paper back copy of Pursuit from Bold Strokes Books.