The Forger's Daughter

Starred review from July 20, 2020
In Morrow’s sterling sequel to 2014’s The Forgers, the enviable life that erstwhile literary forger Will
has painstakingly crafted since he survived a savage attack by criminal rival Henry Slader two decades earlier threatens to come crashing down. One evening outside Will’s farmhouse in New York’s Hudson Valley, a spectral figure springs from the bushes and shoves a package at the younger of Will’s two daughters, 11-year-old Maisie, with the order to deliver it to her father. Inside is what appears to be the rarest book in American literature—Edgar Allan Poe’s Tamerlane and Other Poems—along with a letter from Slader asking for a meeting. When Will, now a beyond-reproach manuscript expert at a Manhattan auction house, meets Slader at a local tavern, his nemesis demands that he forge the Poe book or his most shameful secret will be exposed. Will feels he has no choice but to agree. What he doesn’t realize is just how dangerous the gamble could prove for his family, especially for his coolly enigmatic 20-year-old daughter, Nicole, whose sublime artistic skills he will need in order to create the forgery. Evocatively rendered and emotionally resonant, this literary crime novel is the real deal. Morrow’s gothic tale bears comparison with Poe’s own work. Agent: Henry Dunow, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary.

August 1, 2020
Two decades ago, Will was a literary forger, one of the best in the business. After a bit of legal trouble, he went straight and has stayed on the right side of the law ever since. But all that changes when his younger daughter is assaulted and given a parcel to deliver to her father. Will's archenemy, the despicable forger Henry Slader, is out of prison (see 2014's The Forgers) and presents Will with an offer he can't refuse, if he is to keep his family safe. His only alternative is to forge one of the rarest books in American literary history, Edgar Allan Poe's Tamerlane. Even worse, he must involve his older daughter, a talented artist, in the forgery. This is a crime novel for booklovers; the mystery is solid, but it's the milieu that sells the book. In the same way that a typical Columbo episode was about the criminal and his or her environment, this book is really about the world of the bibliophile and the literary forger. Fascinating and vividly rendered.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)