For sheer intricacy and ingenuity, for skill and clarity of storytelling, it is the kind of book readers wait for, a book to get lost in. “Few books, at most a dozen or two in a lifetime, affect us this way. 1 The same pattern has other names, including 'in saltire' or 'in cross' in heraldry (depending on the orientation of.

A quincunx ( / kwn.kks /) is a geometric pattern consisting of five points arranged in a cross, with four of them forming a square or rectangle and a fifth at its center. “To read the first pages is to be trapped for seven-hundred odd more: you cannot stop turning them.” - The New Yorker A quincunx of pips on the five-side of a die. It is an immersing experience.” - Los Angeles Times Book Review In mood, color, atmosphere and characters, this is Charles Dickens reincarnated. And the invitation is irresistible.” - San Francisco Chronicle “A bold and vivid tale that invites the reader to get lost in the intoxicating rhythms of another world. It is, quite simply, superb.” - Chicago Sun-Times It is an epic, a tour de force, a staggeringly complex and tantalizingly layered tale that will keep readers engrossed in days. One is swept along by those enduring emotions that defy modern art and a random universe: hunger for revenge, longing for justice and the fantasy secretly entertained by most people that the bad will be punished and the good rewarded.” - The New York Times “So compulsively absorbing that reality disappears. An extraordinary modern novel in the Victorian tradition, Charles Palliser has created something extraordinary-a plot within a plot within a plot of family secrets, mysterious clues, low-born birth, high-reaching immorality, and, always, always the fog-enshrouded, enigmatic character of 19th century-London itself.

The quincunx palliser