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.