The Forger's Requiem

November 15, 2024
Violence breaks out among a circle of literary forgers. This final installment of a trilogy that began withThe Forgers (2014) opens with prolific forger Henry Slader waking to discover he has been buried alive in a shallow grave. Struggling to remember who he is and how got there, he manages to claw his way to the surface. When the cobwebs have cleared, he resumes his efforts to blackmail his nemesis, convicted forger Will, with incriminating photos of a murder Will committed in the past. This time, Slader deals with Will's brilliant forger daughter Nicole--even though she was the one who whacked Slader in the head with a shovel and participated in his burial, assuming he was dead. From Nicole, a Mary Shelley specialist with "Banksy bravado," Slader demands forgeries of letters written by theFrankenstein author. She agrees to his terms but encrypts a message in them for a document expert to discover, indicating they are fakes. Grounded in scholarship, the novel does more with literary references than is usually the case in popular fiction. It's a novel in constant movement, beginning in upstate New York and concluding with high drama at Shelley's grave in England. Bad things happen to a lot of people, but for Slader, it's all worth it: "In heady moments he wondered if his accomplishments [as a forger] weren't comparable to those of the authors themselves." For Nicole, the counterfeit pages "can bring real happiness to someone who believes they own, say, a copy ofSense and Sensibility inscribed by Jane [Austen] to her sister, Cassandra." Reading the book, of course, would add to the pleasure. An entertaining blend of detective thriller and literary investigation.

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November 4, 2024
Morrow (The Forger’s Daughter) brings his Forgers trilogy to a close with a disappointing finale that’s equal parts sluggish and overstuffed. A brawl between rival literary forgers Henry Slader and Will Gardener ends when Will’s daughter, 20-something Nicole, hits Henry with a shovel, then buries him in a shallow grave behind their house in the Hudson Valley. Despite nursing a concussion so severe he can’t remember his name, Henry manages to dig himself out of the ground before vandalizing Will’s home and setting out for revenge. He tracks down Nicole, and, after sowing doubts about her father’s loyalties, he convinces her to forge inscriptions by Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce, as well as a stack of letters between Mary Shelley and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft. It soon becomes clear, however, that grown men underestimate Nicole at their own risk. Morrow builds his plot atop bits of amusing literary trivia, but the fleetness of the previous Forgers books is sorely missing, replaced by turgid storytelling that consistently grinds the action to a halt. It’s a letdown. Agent: Henry Dunow, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary. (Jan.)
Correction: A previous version of this review incorrectly stated that Henry and Will forged inscriptions by Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce. It was Nicole who did so. The review has been further updated for clarity.

December 1, 2024
In this spellbinding conclusion to a trilogy, literary forger Henry Slader returns from the dead (not quite literally, but close) with one thing on his mind: revenge. The target of his obsession is Will, the reformed (well, mostly) forger and star of the previous two books, The Forgers (2018) and The Forger's Daughter (2020). You don't need to have read those to enjoy this one, but, just in case, the author provides a brief summary of the events leading up to this novel. And what a novel it is: a brilliantly constructed story of revenge, redemption, deception, and betrayal. Will and Henry, and also Will's daughter Nicole, are such vividly drawn characters that we connect with them on an emotional level: we feel Henry's seething hatred, Will's trepidation, and Nicole's increasing desperation. Spectacularly well written and fiendishly clever, this is both a terrific conclusion to a trilogy and a wonderfully satisfying standalone.

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December 1, 2024

This title concludes Morrow's (literature, Bard Coll.; The Forger's Daughter) trilogy about the heated rivalry between two literary forgers, Will and the savage Henry Slader. It's a compelling tale of decades-long hatred. This book starts with Slader clawing his way out of a grave, having been buried alive after an attempt to murder Will. Slader needs money, so when he recuperates, he blackmails Will's painter daughter Nicole into forging a string of letters from Mary Shelley, a literary find that will be worth a fortune at auction. How he blackmails her is a shocker, changing one's reading of events from an earlier tome in the series. It ends in a bloody confrontation at Mary's grave when Nicole arrives to deliver the letters to him. Despite the air of paranoia that charges the novel, the narrative pace is slow. There's time to describe how one produces a good forgery and to lay out Nicole's veneration of the dead woman whose past she defiles by falsifying Mary's words and feelings. VERDICT An out-of-the-ordinary treat for serious fiction readers. Distinct in subject matter but not tone, this book echoes Daphne du Maurier's Gothic novel Rebecca and Poe's fevered tales.--David Keymer

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