I have to say that A Fatal Likeness is a huge step backward from A Solitary House, Lynn Shepherd's previous novel with young detective Charles Maddox.
It is too bad as the subject matter; Percy Bysshe Shelly, his wife Mary Shelly (the author of Frankenstein) and her step sister Claire Clairmont and the lover's triangle they created was ripe for a good mystery.
But in Shepherd's hands the plot is slowly revealed and the writing sluggish at best. It feels much more like an attack on the lives of Shelley and the two women than an attempt at writing a true mystery.
Shelley is presented as a man-child, selfish and petulant. At times mentally unstable. Mary is a cruel and dangerous woman. Claire, at times playing the innocent is also portrayed as a vindictive and selfish woman who will stop at nothing to destroy her sister's marriage and steal her husband. At the center of it all are the deaths of their children. Shepherd would have us believe that Shelley and his women murdered their own children in pitiful fits of selfishness.
Shepherd has researched her subjects meticulously. In fact a good third of the book is dedicated to the notes she has taken on the subjects. In effect, this novel comes off as more of a high school literary thesis than a mystery novel.
Perhaps that is what I found so dislikable about it. It lacked story. And for a novelist that is a most unforgivable sin.
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