The Dark Clue

August 20, 2001
This debut novel by Wilson, acclaimed nonfiction author of The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America, is an evocative and sophisticated literary thriller set in 1850s Victorian England. Taking his cue from an archetypal Victorian suspense novel, Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, Wilson composes an epistolary fiction in letters and diary entries, reviving Collins's classic characters Walter Hartright and his sister-in-law Marion Halcombe. Here, Hartwright and Halcombe are partners in a search to uncover the truth about elusive Romantic landscape artist J.M.W. Turner. Commissioned by the royal Lady Eastlake to write a definitive biography of the misunderstood artist, the duo meet members of the British elite, eccentric and reserved, all of whom have conflicting memories of the reclusive Turner. The upright Hartright discovers a "dark clue" in Turner's paintings, and he becomes obsessed with unraveling the myth and mystery of a man so many people have misunderstood. Art history lovers will take pleasure in the fascinating details of Turner's squalid upbringing and his early years at the Royal Academy. Wilson's exacting, detailed descriptions of Victorian England—from Dickensian slums to the gilded drawing rooms of royalty—make for vivid storytelling. The tale's pace is stately, but readers tuned to the frequency of 19th-century novels will appreciate Wilson's measured tone and deft treatment of Turner's murky history and Collins's exquisite legacy.