The Devil's Road

by Jean-Pierre Ohl, Mike Mitchell (Translator)

While draining a pond during work for the construction of the Stockton to Darlington Railway George Stevenson's workers discover a female corpse with a dagger stuck between her ribs—could it be that of Lady Beresford, the French wife of a local baron who disappeared under mysterious circumstances twenty years ago? The identity of the victim is at the heart of Jean-Pierre Ohl's novel, a richly woven tapestry set during the rise of capitalism in England.

The Devil's Road has a Dickensian range of characters from the indolent liberal lawyer with a taste for Byron's poems and madeira wine, his imperturbable clerk Snegg, the activist worker Davies and the 'Corporal', a veteran of the Napoleonic wars and demonstrator wounded at the Peterloo Massacre—there is even a role for the young Charles Dickens working in the blacking warehouse.
As well as its vivid picture of English society at a key moment of development, The Devil's Road also has elements of the Gothic novel, making it Jean-Pierre Ohl's homage to the English tradition of fiction.

Genres: Historical Fiction

320 pages, Paperback

Published May 3, 2019

Reviews

[Macqueron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un poil déçu par ce livre soi-disant Dickensien, mais qui n’en a jamais l’humour. On est plutôt dans un roman policier noir et politique, une plongée sociale lugubre dans les racines de notre société, le tout sous une somme de références littéraires du xixème (Austen, Bronte, Dickens, Byron, etc). J’ai pensé à David Peace, avec un style littéraire différent. Ca aurait pu être passionnant, mais j’ai eu l’impression de voir défiler une suite de vignettes bien troussées mais manquant terriblement de lien