759. Hawksmoor

Hawksmoor
Peter Ackroyd
1985
Around 290 pages

You have to really do something different with a mystery to catch the attention of the Powers That Be. Telling the parallel stories of Nicholas Dyer, who built seven churches in 18th-century London for which he needed human sacrifices, and Nicholas Hawksmoor, a detective in the 1980s, who investigates murders committed in the same churches, is a pretty good way to do it.

So a pretty cool concept. But unfortunately, I found Ackroyd a dry and overly detailed storyteller. It wasn't as exhausting as The Name of the Rose by any means, but both novels are intended to be intellectual heavyweights. And those kinds of novels are never overly concerned with pacing.

But I still enjoyed this for the most part, and I thought the background information about the architecture was cool. I was much more into our "modern" Nicholas. Ackroyd is better suited for nonfiction, but mysteries can't help but be fun.

RATING: ***--

Interesting Facts:

Joyce Carol Oates for The New York Times wrote: "Hawksmoor is a witty and macabre work of the imagination, intricately plotted, obsessive in its much-reiterated concerns with mankind's fallen nature."

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