An abandoned lunatic asylum, a nasty pornographer in a wheelchair, a bizarre glass-ceilinged viewing dome beneath a scummy lake, a vast henchman, a mother who hears angels telling her she must harm her child: these are some of the places and people to be found in James Scudamore’s new novel.
Dickensian excess is the name of the game here. It is as if Mr Murdstone and Steerforth and Magwich (and even the foggy salt-flats which herald his startling arrival in fiction) appeared in the same story as Fagin, together with a couple of lost boys, ripe for criminal exploitation. Scudamore’s relish for names, too, is Dickensian. A dying man who spends his time writing is called Scriven, while the wheelchair-bound villain, reigning over a kingdom of stolen spoils, is called Victor; Wreaking is the name of the former asylum, which brings havoc to the lives of all the characters.
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