By far the strongest novel in the trilogy. Where the earlier two novels embrace the murder-mystery-detective genre -- and (particularly in the case of the second book), often don't quite live up to the ghoulishness they promise -- the third installment creates a kind of Bildungsroman for Nicole (daughter of protagonist Will from the earlier books, now a 20-year-old artist figuring out her life) which fills out the darker, more suspenseful moves with genuine character development. The prose tends towards the same, sometimes heavy-handed referentiality (peppered with quotes, references, allusions that can feel a bit too spelled out) as the earlier installments. But I concede that this slightly irritating tic does make sense in context: if the characters seem a bit *too* invested proving they are legitimately well-read, we can see why they might be defensive, given they make their living forging literary history. Nicole, too, finally seems to become self-reflexive about her over-use of cliches, realizing that she (and her father, and, for that matter, antagonist Slader) tend to hide behind them as another kind of defense mechanism. As Nicole experiences deeper and truer emotions, they tend to subside to reveal a more compelling, cleaner style. The choice of literary inspiration -- Mary Shelley, for this book (the previous two used Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe as their primary touchpoints) -- is more persuasive as well. The second book, in particular, feels more indebted than inspired by Poe (my theory: Tamerlane, the text of choice, is too early in Poe's career to really showcase his gothic signature, and the novel doesn't really know how/what to draw from the poetry pamphlet). But Mary Shelley works much better as inspiration, particularly as the novel draws equally on the highly recognizable Frankenstein and more surprising elements from her personal life and letters. Really enjoyed this book and the first in the series; might consider skipping the second.

Effective wiring for sure .. Slader's gathering his senses together after a brutal bash and burial, is well done at opening, and his recordings of who he is slowly emerging feels credible. We switch time and place and learn who did it .. because that's not important! It's the ongoing blackmail etc that comes to dominate... blackmail among thieves .. no matter how you whitewash it, forgery for money is a crime. Two colleagues and one's daughter are deadly Rivals ..

And the daughter's engaged to do a grand forgery of Mary shelley that gets everyone in deep trouble. Eventually the daughter realised she's being unconscionably manipulated, and it all ends in airports where what I've understood is a trilogy .. the bad guys are ended, all resolved. The ambivalent ethics undermines some of story's coherence, but it's all good fun and we learn some thing about Poe, James etc ..

Henry Slader is a literary forger par excellence. A long time feud with Will who attempts to kill him and presumed he was dead, finds Henry disoriented, concussed and suffocating in a grave. Using his wits and bits of memory coming back to him, he decides on a spot of blackmail, also changing his identity in the process to carve out a new life for himself.

Involving literal forgeries on the scale of Edgar Allan Poe and Mary Shelley needs skills and Henry uses Nicole, Wills daughter to execute forgeries which are flawless. They also start the downward tread to Henry’s doom eventually.

There were abrupt changes in location and timelines where one had to take a moment as to what was happening but the story gives one a glimpse into the world of literary pieces and the demand to own an original letter or poetry penned by a famous person.

4,5*
I almost regretted requesting this book at first. There are so many books I want to get to and this one had to be read first since it's on a time limit. But I am so glad using NetGalley 'forced' me to read this book. While I can image this isn't for everyone, it was almost perfect for me. The split POVs giving greater insight. The sassiness and purely intelligent directness that the two main characters had really made the book entertaining and flow. The events of the story really built up to a nice crescendo and once made me gasp out loud. Plus for everything to be tied up in a neat bow by way of the epilogue was just the cherry on top.

This book really suits me as a person and I also learnt a lot reading it. Will definitely buy the printed version of this when it comes out!

Thank you to NetGalley for sending me an advanced reader copy of this, prior to its publication.

I was very drawn to this book because of its title; this led me to expect a flourished writing and I was right. And I also love books about books so this should’ve been right up my alley.
I also expected this to be a thriller, but it fell kind of flat. The potential was there, but the execution wasn’t really what I hoped.
It took some time to adjust to the jump between POVs and timelines, but I got used to it eventually.
I expected more from the characters, but I found their development limited. I didn’t really feel like they moved the plot forward, even though I thought they were a good fit to it. Especially Slader, the antagonist. He felt vey believable. I sometimes appreciate more how a villain is built, than a hero.
Overall I thought this was a good book, quite a quick read for when you want a bit of mistery, but nothing that requires a lot of effort from the reader’s part to figure out what’s happening.

This was a decent book, but not as good I had hoped. Earlier this year I read a previous book by Morrow and thoroughly enjoyed it and anticipated this one would be at the same caliber but it fell a little short.

Perhaps one reason for me was this is the last book in a trilogy. Yet I did not know this until I finished reading the book. If I started from book one my experience may have been somewhat different.

I did find a few hiccups in the beginning, as there are not clear chapter breaks in the copy I was reading. There were sudden changes in locations and who was speaking in the alternating first person POV. It was jarring until realizing this was the format after a few times of encountering this. Not only are there changes in location, but also the timeline switches around a little. It didn’t make for easy reading. After a while I got it figured out and that settled and the book made more sense while reading.

The book felt like it attempted to be a mystery, but it is not. There was a murder (maybe a major plot point in a previous book?) but the culprit really is known. The main content of the book is also about forgeries. Will and Nicole Diehl are father and daughter and have done forgeries in the past. Will has sworn that off as a way to make a living and has found a legal way to earn a living. Nicole is more of a painter anyway, and only dabbled in forgery as an imitation of her father. Yet their nemesis Henry Slader is blackmailing and forcing more forgeries. Slader is a prominent POV.

I did find it interesting that in the beginning of reading this book I found both sides sympathetic Slader and the Diehl’s, although as the book continues it is clear who is the true villain.

I was hoping for a literary thriller about rare books and forgeries, but this one missed the mark. The story follows Henry Slader, a literary forger who survives being buried alive, and gets tangled up with other forgers, including a woman named Nicole. They plan a big forgery involving Mary Shelley letters, while a retired detective digs into an old murder.

The writing was too bogged down with unnecessary details, random events, and awkward romances. There were also forced literary references that felt out of place. The book picked up briefly when Nicole researched Mary Shelley in London, but overall, it was a chore to finish. Not the thriller I was hoping for. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC, but this one wasn’t for me.

A Light Thrill About Competing Forgers

Bradford Morrow is an academic with a graduate degree, who was editing/founding a literary journal (Conjunctions) and publishing novels and other genres since the 1980s. He is currently teaching at the Bard College. He specializes in shades of literary fiction.
“A… literary thriller that brings readers inside the world of expert forgery, rivalrous fury, and generations of dark family secrets, with Mary Shelley’s voice and life woven throughout.” The latter note is a strange thing to insert into a blurb. Searching for “Shelley” led to this curious line of dialogue when a character takes a double-inscribed antique book: “…when Mary eloped to Paris with Percy Shelley, they somehow managed to lose a box of her earliest manuscripts. Never been found. So why don’t we quote unquote find them?” The forger replies: “You mean forge from scratch her juvenilia?” He refuses, so the inquirer suggests: “…Then give me an important cache of undiscovered Mary Shelley letters to Percy, or her father, or, better yet, her mother, from a later period…” They continue this discussion, noting that Mary never knew her mother, so this scenario is unlikely. The forger is asked for “true fiction” to “become fake fact” through forgery. They explore why some forgers have been more ready to forge Arthur Conan Doyle than Shelley. Then, the discussion diverges into health issues.
I read this Shelley section closely because it is relevant to my 18-19th century British literature re-attribution series, which I have completed, and will release in a few months. I explore several related subjects, which I will summarize here, since Morrow has raised this point. 1. In my Handwriting Comparison Study (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vd7IMsLl9dPTOqYod0pV8rQjgIpvAhYm/view?usp=sharing), I demonstrate that “Mary Shelley” uses Hand-L in the manuscript of Frankenstein, which belongs to the L-group that was all ghostwritten by Pierce Egan (1772-1849). Egan’s group is humongous and is behind many canonical British bylines. The Handbook includes illustrations of this same Hand-L appearing in “Elizabeth Gaskell’s” undated manuscript for Wives and Daughters, “Olive Schreiner’s” undated From Man to Man, “Charles Burney’s” “Letters to Fanny Burney d’Arblay” from as early as 1788, and in Egan’s own inscription on The Mistress of Royalty in 1814. I also prove the linguistic similarity between these texts with stylometry. In contrast, “Arthur Conan Doyle’s” manuscripts are written in Hand-G, whose underlying ghostwriter is James Muddock (1843-1934). Hand-G also appears in manuscripts assigned erroneously to “Wilkie Collins”, “Thomas Hardy”, and many others. The reference in Morrow’s passage to forging juvenilia manuscripts and assigning them to “Mary Shelley” echoes the obvious forgery of other juvenilia manuscripts, such as the “Bronte” sisters’. An echoing Hand-C appears not only in “Charlotte Bronte” and in her husband “Arthur Bell Nicholls”, but also in “Jane Austen”. Though the juvenilia were forged later than this cluster of manuscripts, and included the direct involvement of a forger. Nicholls is known to have “sold Bronte letters and juvenilia, along with copyrights, to Clement Shorter, acting for the forger T. J. Wise”. I explain how this case is significant to proving the broad use of between 6 and 12 ghostwriters to create all of Britain’s canonical output between the Renaissance and 1934 across this series, for those interested in this topic. These ghostwriters could not fully hide their role (despite leaving their bylines off manuscripts) because in the days when writing-by-hand was normal, their handwriting could be spotted by anybody searching for “forgeries” or ghostwriters. But the publishing market was making too much money by letting these guys monopolize the press to have their “experts” out such handwriting matches across pop bylines to the public, or academia.
“Literary forger Henry Slader, assaulted and presumed dead by his longtime nemesis, Will, awakens in a shallow grave, suffocating in dirt. Concussed and disoriented, Slader exhumes himself and sets out to exact revenge on his rival, orchestrate Will’s downfall, and make a fortune along the way—armed with a devastating secret about Will’s past.” The rift between these enemies remains unexplained across most of the book, with repeat references to the animosity, while the cause for this hatred remains “secret”, or simple left out by a careless author. Such refrain from explain just what the logical cause for tension between the hero and the antagonist are, and use of this lack of knowledge as a secret carrot that might be revealed in the end is an awful literary device that should be abandoned. If the motive is just revealed early on, the rest of the book can be spent on diving deeper into this cause, instead of just repeating a surface fear, without getting any deeper on its significance.
“…Slader quickly draws in Will’s daughter, Nicole, wielding his threats against her father to blackmail her into forging inscriptions by such authors as Poe, Hemingway, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein.” This is part of the discussion where “Shelley” was mentioned. She does attempt these various forgeries. Though little of the technical forging labor is discussed, as Slader merely sniffs the paper to check for the “fresh ink scent” to verify they are of high-quality. And regarding “Poe”, the question is asked absurdly if “Shelley” had an affair with him (ridiculous because they lived on different continents), instead of exploring some of the relevant matters that would come in to forging “Poe”.
“As Nicole’s skill grows, so does her devotion to—and doubts about—her father’s integrity, until she commits the ultimate betrayal for the sake of his freedom. With breathtakingly precise background knowledge and virtuoso execution, Nicole forges a suite of brilliantly convincing and surpassingly valuable letters by Frankenstein author Mary Shelley—planting within them the seeds of Slader’s doom. Moving between upstate New York, a village in Ireland, London, and ending in a shocking standoff at the site of Mary Shelley’s grave in a coastal town in Southern England… both a… standalone novel and the crescendo ending to the trilogy…” The previous two works in this trilogy are The Forgers (2014), and The Forger’s Daughter (2020).
This is a pretty good novel, but there are too many glitches that detract from what it might have been.
—Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Fall 2024: https://anaphoraliterary.com/journals/plj/plj-excerpts/book-reviews-fall-2024

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me a copy of this text for my review.

There wasn't really a lot to write home about with this one. I was promised a thriller but was just met with another random guy who narrates like he would talk over me at a bar. The pacing was a little strange, and I think that there could have been a few plot points that could have threaded into the storyline a little bit. This wasn't really a book to write home about because it didn't exactly motivate me to read.

To live was to lie, he decided. Such was the price of being human. In the end, all people were forgers. from The Forger’s Requiem by Bradford Morrow

I am late to the party, reading the last installment in a trilogy. But I am happy to say that The Forger’s Requiem works as a stand alone novel. The backstory is presented in a natural way in the narrative.

The novel’s opening scene is riveting, a hook that goes deep and won’t let go. A man comes to and realizes he is unable to breath or move, that he has been buried alive, saved only by a small pocket of air. He crawls his way out, his head aching, fingers charred, his memory foggy. It takes some time for him to piece together what had happened as he crawls and stumbles out of the woods.

Eventually he comes to an empty house, breaks in, treats his injuries. It is the house of the people who had tried to kill him and hide his body.

Henry Slader had incriminating photographs and was blackmailing Will. Will’s daughter saw Slader come at her father with a knife and hit Slader on the head.

Slader was a forger of rare books and manuscripts. Will was, too,before he served a prison term for literary forgery. But Will owed Slader.

Nicole had learned forgery from her dad. Slader demands Nicole create forgeries for him to sell in exchange for photographic proof that her father murdered her mother’s brother.

Slader in hiding reinvents himself over and over while Nicole travels abroad to study Mary Shelley in preparation for forging letters from Mary to her deceased mother, keeping her father in the dark about her plans.

But things are revealed that challenge the truth Nicole wanted to believe.

I enjoyed the writing and learning insider details about literary forgeries. The story is told from Slader’s and Nicole’s viewpoints, allowing insights. I found it an entertaining read.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley

I enjoyed this book and was kept intrigued by the story. It introduced me to a world I knew nothing about.

I believe I was promised a literary thriller?

As I was browsing NetGalley, I saw something about rare books, forgeries, and Mary Shelley. Let’s press that “request” button at once!

Ok, so somebody wakes up buried alive, but manages to get out, with amnesia and injuries. “When he tried to scream, his screams were just ideas of screams.” Me: That’s a lot of screams in one sentence! I wonder how this particular read will go…

The guy that got buried alive is named Henry Slader. He is a literary forger who ran afoul of another forger (Will) and his daughter Nicole (who is a talented forger too, what a surprise). Everyone has skeletons in the closet, and lots of family and other secrets will come to light during the course of this book. After revealing that he isn’t dead after all, Slader sort of blackmails Nicole to help him with various forgeries, as well as the forgery of a lifetime – “newly discovered” letters of Mary Shelley. A retired detective, Pollock, shows up, as a cold case, the murder of Nicole’s uncle that happened twenty years ago, will not let him rest. Etc, etc, etc.

There is an interesting story here. Somewhere. Buried deep.

It is buried beneath:

😩 the writing that I could not stomach
😩 unnecessary details
😩 telling without showing
😩 meandering plot
😩 stuff happening out of the blue
😩 hanging threads explained in “oh, by the way” sentences
😩 romance that is just suddenly there
😩 literary allusions badly glued on (what kind of person quotes Emily Dickinson when going to dig up a grave to check if the supposedly dead person is still there???)
😩 the excruciating boredom I felt while reading

When Nicole went to London to do research on Mary Shelley for her forgery project, the book became better for a short while. These pages belonged in a better novel. Reading about Mary Shelley was interesting, and I would like to read more at some point. There was that, at least.
Finishing the book was a chore! I am glad it was short.

Thanks a lot to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC! (Sorry it didn’t work out.)

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I want to state upfront that I did DNF at 15% after realising the book was reading very slow for me.

I admit I went into The Forger’s Requiem with high hopes after reading that this was “a gripping literary thriller that brings readers inside the world of expert forgery, rivalrous fury, and generations of dark family secrets, with Mary Shelley’s voice and life woven throughout.” as stated in the blurb.

Unfortunately, the writing wasn’t a good match for my preferences, and I couldn’t get into it the way I wanted and expected to.

I’m sure this would be a huge hit for people who are more familiar with Morrow’s writing or enjoy references to the classics, but I’m sad to say this wasn’t for me.

This was a very fun autumnal romp through the world of literary forgery. Bradford Morrow clearly knows a lot about what has to go into making a good literary forgery (where to source the paper, what kind of ink to use, how best to dry the paper, etc.) which made this story feel very real. His characters are also fantastic, nuanced people. While I did find myself rooting for some of the characters more than others, none of them were particularly good people (I mean . . . they're technically criminals), which made the story so much more interesting.

Literary forger Henry Slader unexpectedly finds himself in an Edgar Allan Poe story when he, concussed and bruised, awakens in a shallow grave. Shakily digging himself out, Slader gradually remembers that Will, his old rival, and his daughter, Nicole, assaulted him with a shovel after a deal involving the forgery of a rare Poe book went bad. Determined to avenge himself on Will (20 years of bad blood between the two men includes a violent attack that landed Slader in prison) and needing to raise cash, Slader blackmails Nicole, a budding artist and a talented forger, threatening to expose her father’s role in the unsolved murder of her uncle. After forging inscriptions by such authors as Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, Nicole is tasked with creating a cache of letters by Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, a valuable trove that will enable Slader to retire permanently from the forgery business. But even the best-laid plans can go astray. A shocking climax at Mary Shelley’s grave in Bournemouth, England, leads a stunned Nicole to wonder what “drives people to such lunacy.” Toggling between Slader’s third-person perspective and Nicole’s first-person narrative, Morrow offers fascinating insights into the literary forger’s art. Although this is the concluding volume to the author’s trilogy (The Forgers, The Forger’s Daughter), it can be read as a dark, twisty standalone thanks to plenty of backstory.

A man presumed dead, clawing his way back to life, hell-bent on revenge. While the plot moves quickly, I struggled to connect emotionally with the characters. That said, The Forger’s Requiem will likely appeal to readers who enjoy morally complex characters and high-stakes psychological games, but for me, it was a bit too cold and calculated, with little emotional warmth or meaningful character growth to anchor the narrative.

This wasnt my favorite but i would still recommend it for those wanting a dark novel. this didnt have too much character development but the plot was thick with details. i feel like this is perfect for readers who love to read about books, in that regard i would recommend this! thank you to netgalley and publishers for arc

I'm the first person to rate and review this book. Ideally, I'd lavish it in praise, but realistically, it's exactly the same as its two predecessors. A three-star read through and through.
I debated not reading this at all, but I do like tale of forgeries and books, and my completist nature demanded I finish the trilogy.
Now I have. To Morrow's credit, he's consistent. All of his Forger books have the same style, mood, and quality. They are very literary in the way that the prose is sophisticated and highbrow. Yet for some reason this consistently comes at the cost of character development and actualization. Which is to say Morrow knows how to turn a sentence more than he knows how to create an engaging and believable character.
The protagonist of this one, the original forger's daughter, Nicole, at no point reads like a twenty-year-old. Her younger sister doesn't read like much of an eleven-year-old either for that matter. Nicole talks like an old British novel, calls her parents by their first names, and carries out sophisticated international literary deceptions, not to mention peculiarly passionless love affair.
There's a lot of stilted people making stilted awkward conversations. Though technically, not so much, as the novel is pretty dense, with narrative consistently winning over dialogue.
The only more or less believable character is the antagonist, Slader. In fact, the opening scene of his crawling out of the grave, having been buried alive, is the novel's best, by far.
It stands to mention that just about all of the characters carry on like they are in an old British novel, which makes mentions of the US geography disorienting.
While the novel leaves you wanting in character department, it excels in the field of details. From forgery descriptions to literary backstory (this one involves a certain prodigy who gave the world Frankenstein), it's all fascinating, well-researched, and a treat for fans of "books about books."
So, something of a mixed bag. Not great, but solidly decent throughout, a reasonably quick read. Now the trilogy is complete. Done. Moving on. Thanks Netgalley.

This book was dense, but that is also the author's style of writing. It's not that a lot is always happening, but the author wants you to know a lot to understand what is happening. I appreciate the literary historical references but this book was simply not my cup of tea.