The Dark Clue

by James Wilson

Hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "a luscious Victorian thriller" that "sends two characters from Wilkie Collins's 1860s novel [The Woman in White] on a brilliant literary mission," James Wilson's The Dark Clue is as stylishly inventive as the oil paintings of J. M. W. Turner, the elusive genius who lies at the thriller's heart. Sheltered, upright Walter Hartright is commissioned to write a biography of England's great Romantic landscape artist. When he discovers the "dark clue" hidden deep within Turner's paintings, he becomes eerily obsessed with reconstructing a life that is shrouded in mystery and steeped in rumor. To do so, he seeks help from a Dickensian assemblage of the lowest and highest elements of society, from John Ruskin to the tawdry women of the dockside brothels. Soon enough, he uncovers evidence of unspeakable depravity, but can it be believed? Acclaimed historian James Wilson's debut novel offers a "compelling vision of the mean streets of London," a "marvelous period-piece mystery" whose "vivid evocation of Turner's paintings -- the brooding colors and dark clues -- will haunt the reader" (Helen Parramore, Tampa Tribune). "[Wilson's] descriptions ... are as luminous, majestic, and mysterious as Turner's finest paintings; you may read them in awe." -- The Washington Post Book World "Irresistibly flavorful ... Wilson keeps a firm grip on our attention." -- Bruce Allen, The Boston Globe "Evocative and sophisticated ... Wilson's exacting, detailed descriptions of Victorian England ... make for vivid storytelling." -- Publishers Weekly

Genres: Mystery, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Victorian, Crime

400 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2001

About the author

JAMES WILSON was born and brought up near Cambridge, and studied History at Oxford University. He now divides his time between London and France.

In 1975 James received a Ford Foundation grant to research and write The Original Americans: US Indians, for the Minority Rights in London. Over the next twenty-five years he travelled widely in the US and Canada, working on – among other projects – a number of radio and TV documentaries, including the award-winning Savagery and the American Indian and The Two Worlds of the Innu, both for the BBC. His critically-acclaimed history of Native Americans, The Earth Shall Weep, was published by Picador in the UK in 1998, and by Grove/Atlantic in the US the following year. In 2000, it won a Myers Outstanding Book award. James continues to serve as a member of the executive committee of Survival, an international organization campaigning for the rights of indigenous peoples worldwide.

James is the author of four novels, all published by Faber & Faber: The Dark Clue (described by Allan Massie in The Scotsman as ‘wonderfully entertaining’, and by The Washington Post as ‘a stunning first novel’); The Bastard Boy (longlisted for the IMPAC Award); The Woman in the Picture (‘multi-layered, deeply absorbing and entertaining’ – The Times; ‘A superb achievement’ – Kevin Brownlow); and Consolation (‘an animated, haunting and surprisingly uplifting novel’ – The Observer).

A fifth novel, The Summer of Broken Stories, will be published by Alma Books in April 2015.

You can visit James online at jameswilsonauthor.com, and on Twitter at @jcwilsonauthor.

Reviews

[Brenda Clough · Rating 2 out of 5]

The spoiler free version:
This is a loooong slow start, and you should plan to hang in for at least 150 fairly static pages before it picks up. You had also better know a whole lot about the Victorian cultural scene. It would not do you any harm to go rent Mr.TURNER (the movie, which came out in 2015) which will give you an idea of the main character. You will get no help from the author, who assumes you know all these people. All the other people in the book are merely researchers; it is Turner who is the subject.

I agree with the other critiquers, that none of the characters we already know of act in character. The book breaks its back at a crucial point, which is why IMO it is not a success. In more detail:


The plot of the book, as far as I can make out, runs like this:


THIS IS A SPOILER, okay?


1. Walter Hartright sets out to write a book about Turner, the famous painter.
2. He gradually learns that Turner, while a genius, might have had serious problems as well.
3. This sends Walter around the bend and after a couple rounds with prostitutes he comes home and rapes his sister-in-law.

Laid out like this, you can see the gap. How does the work get from 2 to 3? It beats me. It cannot be that Turner, possessed of your common or garden H.P. Lovecraftian Eldritch Evil, corrupts all who look into his life. There are at least two other people in the book doing it, who do not have a breakdown involving pervy sex. Can it be envy, pure? All other artists, unable to abide Turner's genius, go wacky? But there is no display of sociopathic outbreak among the other many artists in the book. I am forced to conclude that Walter himself has a mental or spiritual flaw which, under pressure, cracks and sends him into a psychotic episode. This would make sense except that he has been under considerable pressure before and came through heroically.




It is a puzzlement.

[Kaethe · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Dark Clue: A Novel - James Wilson Despite my very good intentions, I can already tell where my new efforts at journaling are going to fail.  For one thing, I have more time to spend reading (while eating, while waiting for my husband to pick me up at work, etc) than I have to spend writing about my reading.  So, even though I'm making more notes as I read, and thinking more about my reading, the time to synthesize and distill those thoughts is lacking.  Also, I read fast and a lot.  Currently I'm seven books behind in my journal and I just know it's going to get worse.So. Even though I'd like to say something about this book, I'm at a loss.  Because my youngest is sleeping on the sofa behind me, and I don't want to wake her up turning on the light to see what I wrote in my notebook as I was reading.  Seven books later I'm having a hard time remembering details.  Okay first:  my one big disappointment with the book.  I really expected a traditional mystery-that-will-be-solved.Library copy
 
 

[Simon newson · Rating 2 out of 5]

At about p300 I skipped the next 100 or so pages and it made no difference to my enjoyment or understanding of this book. Ignore the opening two sentences at your peril!

[Rich · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a sequel to Wilkie Collins' 'The Woman in White' using the hero and heroine in that book in another mystery, whereby the hero is asked to investigate a mystery surrounding a series of paintings.
This book fails because it's mystery is badly presented, I read on hoping I would discover what secret the hero would uncover, only to discover there wasn't one. The plot is all build up to well... nothing.
There is a beginning to this story and an end but no middle. All you are left with are two characters, the hero and Marian who have been dragged through the dirt and who don't even have the justification of apprehending a villan or uncovering an evil deed. Pointless.
If you loved 'The Woman in White' stay away from this. It's plot is nowhere as complex or as interesting as that classic
novel. Indeed as plotwise it bears no relation to it, why use the characters from that novel, especially as they are treated so badly here. There is a theme here of looking into the abyss and the abyss looks back at you, but the plot is too poor to justify it.

[Jonathan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just could not get into this book.

[Janice Bridger · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have had this book for years and never read it, I was just about to send it to charity when I saw the name Walter Hartright on the cover and realised the significance! He and Marion Halcombe both featured in the Wilkie Collins novel, the Woman in White and this is a “sort of” sequel. Even more disturbing than the W in W though and no one comes out of it well. Warning!!

Walter takes on the task of writing a biography of the painter Turner who has recently died. He is probably supposed to be writing a flattering version but there are definitely dark clues to be found both in the painting and acquaintances of the man. There are too many of these people to remember unless you make notes like Walter and Marion try to do. The style of the book is of extracts from their journals and various letters. Poor Laura Walter’s wife doesn’t even appear just as a letter recipient and the book gradually descends into a Victorian Dickensian kind of hell. Walter and Turner become Jekyll and Hyde type characters!!

Do read if you want to think more about Turner, flawed genius, and be challenged!! Don’t read if you get upset when characters are totally flawed and if you want a resolved mystery and a happy ending!!
Ps yes this is the same person who wrote about Native American history- this probably explains some of the unresolved nature and violence of the story.

[BRT · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an excessively detailed story of a man given the task to write an autobiography of the artist J.W.M. Turner. The sheer volume of detail, think pages of description of each painting in a gallery, is overwhelming but does provide an immersment into the time period. I kept slogging through, to find myself enthralled by the descent into madness of the protagonist. Unfortunately, the ending included a most disturbing scene that had no prior hints and, in my opinion, was unnecessary to the plot. I felt extremely let down for having read that far for such a disappointing and upsetting ending.

[Bryn Hammond · Rating 1 out of 5]

In which Turner may have raped and murdered 12 or 13 year old girls (this point unresolved in the text), while Walter and Marian from The Woman in White end with him raping her, after he follows Turner into sadism with young girls in sex work.

Abusive sex as the big reveal: I remember when that used to be edgy.
I don't know much about Turner's life, but at the least, we're owed a historical note to tell us what's slander and what's been said or speculated by people other than Wilson.

[Shema · Rating 3 out of 5]

A different way of portraying. At first I thought that the beginning and end were written by the author itself. Even though I liked the way the story unfolded through letters and journals, I feel like I’m more confused than at the beginning about Turner’s life. Either it has an open ending or I’m still bad at interpreting this kind of works, but still, I was kind of worked up towards the ending:all for nothing. It still was a fun experience.

[Hope Morgan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not sure I like what he did to these beloved characters from Wilkie Collin's "Woman in White" one of my favorite books of all time. The plot was good, it didn't really need Walter and Marion...in fact, that made me not really love the book, where if they would have been new characters, I would have liked this a lot.

[Elaine Hargrave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very dry reading. I was tempted to give up but carried on. The intrigue was surrounding the artist Turner and his lifestyle. His humble upbringing and aggressively protected privacy provoked the inquisitive interest into his private life. The web of intrigue turned the brother and sister who were engaged into finding the truth about Turner into a period of madness in their behaviour.

[María Ureña · Rating 3 out of 5]

Joseph Mallord William Turner fue un pintor inglés en la época victoriana, sus paisajes son de una belleza deslumbrante pero también ocultan oscuridad y decadencia, fue una persona excéntrica y de trato difícil, lo que lo hace perfecto protagonista de una novela de misterio victoriano.

[Paul · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't finish it. Didn't get the story, did;t see the point so no tension, nothing to keep me interested or entertained. Unusual for me not to finish a book even if I don't really like it.

[Dawn Folley · Rating 3 out of 5]

A discussion of the nature of light, dark and corruption. And Turner.

[DrJ · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF March 2007

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 2 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in June 2008.

The Dark Clue is a sequel, of sorts, to Wilkie Collins' classic The Woman in White. It has the same central characters: artist Walter Harkwright, and his sister-in-law Marion. Rich from his marriage but still relatively unsuccessful as an artist, Walter is approached to write a biography of JMW Turner, as a counterblast from still-living friends of the famous artist to a scurrilous biography raking up scandal (the actual first biography of Turner by Walter Thornbury). But as he and Marion investigate, they discover that Turner did indeed have a dark side, and the truth about the revolutionary painter is at the least going to be more complicated than Walter's initial assessment that his "life of him will be quick work indeed".

The Dark Clue re-uses the narrative technique of The Woman in White, purporting to be a collection of letters and diary entries, with Marion's diary being probably the chief source. While Laura, Walter's beloved in Collins' novel and now his wife, was absent from the stage for most of The Woman in White, she appears only as the author of a handful of letters in The Dark Clue, which mostly are complaints that Walter is neglecting her and their children. Wilson picks up on the feeling that must strike most readers of Collin's novel, that Walter and Marion would be extremely well suited to each other, while Laura is an abstraction for which he unfortunately develops a romantic passion. For Collins, Laura is a personification of persecuted innocent beauty (a very Victorian female character); for Wilson, she is a personification of a dutiful wife and mother. For both, she is a cipher, at best a passive plot device, and not really a character at all.

The differences between the two writers is perhaps best seen in their handling of the relationship between Walter and Marion. Collins, as far as I remember, leaves their interest in each other unspoken, unacknowledged even by the characters themselves. Wilson, more direct, engineers a moment of self revelation for Marion which beings a new dark note to their research together. Writing at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Wilson can obviously be far more graphic than Collins, about this and other aspects of the novel as well. This makes The Dark Clue more immediate, but much less subtle than The Woman in White. For much of the earlier novel, Collins sets up an air of menace that seems far beyond what Wilson's straightforwardness can do. Even so, he manages to leave the exact nature of Turner's scandalous activities frustratingly unspecified, preferring to concentrate on the effect that learning about them has on Walter's morals; I found this very unsatisfying indeed. The consequent lack of impact makes the subtitle "a novel of suspense" seem rather inaccurate; I assumed that it was one more item inherited from Collins' novel, but this is not the case.

Turner clearly would be a great subject for a biography, whether the biographer believed the more scandalous stories or not. But the structure of The Dark Clue is not really suited to a biography in the way that it is to the unravelling of the murky plots in The Woman in White. This is a novel where the initial idea is more interesting than its execution; it could have been another The French Lieutenant's Woman but isn't well enough done to reach anywhere near that level.

While it is fairly obvious to compare a sequel to a classic novel with the original, this is not always something which the reader feels inclined to do. There are, for example, many sequels to Pride and Prejudice which make no attempt to be anything other than humorous romantic novels, and it is perfectly reasonable for them to succeed on that level without approaching the greatness of Jane Austen. But Wilson fairly clearly sets out to write a novel which is a worthy partner to The Woman in White (and the blurb and reviews on the cover reinforce this). This means that, in my view, it becomes reasonable to criticise Wilson because he is not as good a writer as Collins, who is, after all, not himself a master in the class of (say) Dickens or Tolstoy, so a modest target compared with some that could have been chosen. For a "novel of suspense", The Dark Clue is unpardonably dull, for a biographical, historical novel, it is insufficiently focused on its subject.

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you're a lover of "The Woman in White," you might hate "The Dark Clue." Walter Hartright turns unrecognizable and Marian Halcombe pretty nearly follows.

If, however, you're just looking for a good neo-Victorian novel... Well, you may still find yourself perplexed. Wilson's project here-- exploring Victorian England from the perspective of characters we already know and love but pulling down some of the veils Victorian writers had to keep up-- is appreciable and admirable. His treatment of painter JMW Turner, purportedly the center of the "mystery" at the heart of the novel, is lush and draws in even the non-art-lovers among us. But the plot feels clumsy and flimsy, and does not work well enough to support the shocking change we see in characters' personalities and behaviors. "Even good guys have a dark side," would seem to be Wilson's tag line here, and I must wholeheartedly agree with him in theory; but "The Dark Clue" in it's exploration of that dark side got a little lost.

[Elderberrywine · Rating 5 out of 5]

My, now, this was something.

Walter Hartright and sister-in-law Marian (characters from Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White) are commissioned to write a biography of the recently deceased British Painter, J. M. W. Turner. BTW - at the beginning, the choice of these two characters seems rather arbitrary, but the original novel's dynamic between these two begins to kick in about midway through.

The novel is in the form of letters and journal fragments, and as bits and pieces of Turner's secretive and multi-layered life begin to be uncovered, and the motives of all parties involved start to be questioned, the truths about more lives than just Turner's are revealed. The questions regarding the key painting, The Bay of Baiae bring out a near-Lovecraftian cast upon the whole matter.

I had, by an odd coincidence, just seen the movie Mr. Turner, and I must say they complemented each other quite nicely. There's far more in those paintings than I ever suspected.

[Deirdre · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the first 100 pages and the writing gave me the sense that I was on the trail with the narrator. The description and analysis of JMW Turner's pictures were wonderful and beautifully written. However I did need to google the paintings themselves. I am not sure why I lost interest after page 100 - I couldn't cope any more with the intricacies of the detective story I guess. I couldn't connect with the blurbs on the backcover that's for sure - why would the author recreate a book written by another author? I am rating it with 3 stars for the enjoyment I got from the first few chapters.

[Tom Walsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read "The Woman in WHite" by WIlkie Collins twice. To me, it's one those "perfect" novels. "The Dark Clue" claims to be a sequel to "The Woman in White." Well, it contains the same characters, and they're used (cleverly and with epistolary technique) in a mystery novel about a proposed bio of the painter Turner. But, with all their enthusiasm and academice prowless, they come across a secret. THe book has the feel of a 19th century VicLit novel, and I happen to view that genre as my favorite! This book is a real treat and escape from your world!

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This books was a bit disappointing. The parts that were about JMW Turner and his life and paintings are good and interesting, but it's too difficult to guess how much if fact and how much is purely from the author's own imagination. Also, the last third of the book goes pretty completely off the rails, and, without giving anything away, I found the ending particularly unsatisfying.

Still, there's aren't many novels about JMW Turner, and The Dark Clue is worth reading for Turner fans simply on that basis.

[Nick Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! A book of real literary and psychological ambition. Wilson takes the hero of a Wilkie Collins novel and sets him on a vertiginous quest to unravel the hidden horrors encoded in Turner's paintings. He uses the epistolatory structure of early 19th century fiction and finds a totally successful voice for his characters. The tension of a psychological/art historical thriller is sustained by passages of exquisite description - sample the chapter on the South Downs: beautifully realized. And the descent into the climactic maelstrom provides a really intense finale.

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this book started out promisingly but ran out of steam in the second half. The mystery itself was a little bit muddled and I was not a fan of the plot twist at the end. I think I can see what he was trying to achieve but the whole idea of these post-modern Victorian novels is that they should be at least as readable as the original novels they are modelled on, that in some way the writers are attempting to improve on them and use modern writing methods to make the genre fresh. I didn't think that this book managed that.

[Timothy Mcpike · Rating 4 out of 5]

A detective story with no dead bodies, just the mystery of the true nature of the painter JMW Turner. Styled as a Victorian epistolary novel, the story has carefully observed characters, some beautiful writing, and, surprising given the lack of violence, enough suspense to keep the pages turning. Towards the climax it becomes a challenge to suspend disbelief, but it was definitely worth the time invested. I strongly suggest that it be read with a smartphone or tablet handy (or an art book) to look up each Turner painting mentioned, as each is pivotal to fully appreciating the plot.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of this novel was interesting, and it had just enough intrigue to keep me hanging in there and finish it. But upon completion I am asking myself, what was the point of it? I probably will go back and read The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, because the relationship between the two main characters interested me.

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very fine literary novel - exploring the dark and potentially very disturbing roots of J M W Turner's creativity as a painter via the early detective story techniques pioneered by Wilkie Collins during (almost) the same period. James Wilson therefore tells the historical tale in its own textual and literary terms. An excellent piece of work and highly recommended.

[Andrew Scholefield · Rating 3 out of 5]

James Wilson creates a good atmosphere and describes Victorian London well. However, the book is very slow, very little happens and the ending is anti- climatic. If you are not interested in Turner the painter this would get very boring.

[Hilary · Rating 1 out of 5]

What tripe, and what a nerve, debauching another and a better writer's characters.

[ialarmedalien · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oddly compelling, even though the content of the book--investigating the painter Turner--was not really all that thrilling.

[Amna · Rating 1 out of 5]

Most trashy book.