The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox

Blaggards, scoundrels, bounders and cads; nowhere near as literary as it thinks it is: 2/5

This book starts so well, shows so much promise, and categorically fails to deliver. I was very much looking forward to settling down to a dark, twisted tale with a Victorian England backdrop, but what I got was a load of hokum.

It all starts promisingly enough. "The Meaning of Night" begins in a highly intriguing, albeit melodramatic, fashion. From the first line of his narrative, we know that our narrator (who uses several different names, but amongst them, the initials "EG" recur) is a killer; the protagonist murders a hapless soul in a dark alleyway in London and then goes to have his dinner. Why has he done that? (The murder, that is, not the dinner. Perhaps killing brings hunger on, I dunno, never killed anyone). I dived into this murky tale, like a Victorian into the dirty Thames (or something), eager to know more, but thereafter followed disappointment.

For the first third, the book is solid entertainment. The sections set in London are well done and we truly get a sense of a seamy, teeming metropolis in the nineteenth century. Our narrator is very much a part of this world he inhabits. EG has a day job for an outwardly respectable law firm but at night wanders dark streets and visits a prostitute (though she doesn't charge our dashing hero for her services. He must be oh so dashing, eh?).

This was all enjoyable stuff; perhaps the Uriah Heep-style neighbour is a little much and some readers will roll their eyes at the whore with a heart of gold, but I was having fun at this point.

But then the plot machinations begin in earnest and I found myself rolling my eyes a fair bit. EG, it turns out, has a mortal enemy, a veritable nemesis; he's a blaggard and a bounder to boot. Phoebus Rainsford Daunt, a poet (EG's dismissive derision regarding Daunt's literary "talents" and increasing incredulity at his foe's success are quite amusing), man-about-town and former schoolmate of our EG is the swine in question. P. Rainsford Daunt is the kind of chap who, had he lived a few years later, would no doubt have busied himself tying maidens to railway tracks and twirling his moustache, all the while perfecting his evil laugh. In this novel, he must connive and conspire to ruin EG's life. He makes his start by getting EG expelled from school for a crime that EG (gasp!) did not commit. What a rotter and no mistake. A pity that we never get any proper insight into this character at all, even though an entire section is ostensibly devoted to his early life. Daunt is a cardboard cut out, cut-and-paste villain. It is disappointing, when Cox has seemingly tried (albeit not entirely successfully) to give anti-hero EG shades of light and dark, that P. Rainsford Daunt is just a bad 'un, and that's it.

After Daunt makes his entrance, things start to go downhill. They career further downwards when EG gets a love interest (above and beyond the aforementioned lady of the night). When one of the book's secrets is revealed, connected with EG's background and why a certain family member has behaved in a certain way, the reader might feel, as I did, that we had expected more and that we had had a fair old setup for something of a throwaway reveal. At least, though, I didn't feel completely cheated, which is what happened as we approached the final section and I saw where Cox was going.

I have to give this book two stars (after early on, thinking it might be a four or five-star book; then as the tedium set in, thinking three) for the dreadful, predictable, hackneyed ending. After several hundred pages of build-up, it is a monumental letdown. The denouement is desperately disappointing; presumably supposed to be a "twist", although it seems to me that the majority of readers must surely have seen it coming a mile off and then checked themselves, hoping that the author was cleverer than we were giving him credit for and leading us down a blind alley, only to truly astonish us within the final pages. But no. I can't even think that it is an attempt at parody, either. I think this is Cox's genuine, intended big finish. I skipped over the last pages, very much annoyed at where Cox was taking us. What a blaggard, what a bounder, etc.

I don't like it when books underestimate their readership's intelligence, but this is what this novel does, in spades. EG behaves in an increasingly stupid manner for reasons that never even come close to being convincing and it is all for a contrived, predictable, silly ending. All of the hard work Cox does in this novel with his elegant language, the intriguing footnotes - all of that is squandered in the aforementioned hokum of where this book ends up. It is a real shame, because I wanted to love this. Early on, I thought it was going to be one of those great books that I could recommend to others, confident that they would not be disappointed; but I can't recommend this. I think a lot of people I know would be disappointed in it and sorry that they had squandered their time.

LATER EDIT: The edition of the book I have posted a picture of has, unlike my copy, a text along the top of the front cover that gives some of the key plot details away. Which is silly. I have a few books with blurbs that do that, ridiculous really.