The Meaning of Night: A Confession

Sidney Allinson is Canadian news correspondent for Britain’s The Army
Quarterly and Defence. He is the author of The Bantams: The Untold Story
of World War I, Jeremy Kane, and Kruger’s Gold: A Novel of the
Anglo-Boer War.

Set in London during the 1850s (complete with foggy streets, dank slums,
brothels, opium dens, and posh gentlemen’s clubs) and recounted in
elegant Victorian language, The Meaning of Night is a thumping good
read. It revolves around the deadly rivalry between a poet-criminal
named Phoebus Rainsford Daunt and Edward Glyver, a scholar and murderer
whose ruthless ambition stems from his lifelong conviction that he is
destined for greatness. The novel’s two protagonists are ably
supported by a huge cast of colourful secondary characters.

This enjoyably old-fashioned tale of purloined documents, a thwarted
inheritance, obsessive love, implacable revenge, and myriad turns of
events was 30 years in the making. The author settled down to complete
it while undergoing treatment for cancer that threatened to take his
eyesight (happily, it did not). Laced with arcane literary allusions and
historical footnotes, Cox’s labyrinthine but well-plotted story is one
of the best historical crime novels to be published in recent years.