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The Man Behind The Glass is a Victorian mystery – Gothic Fiction by Greg Howes.
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Blurb
The Man Behind the Glass is based around a character called Septimus Blackwood, a Victorian photographer with a difference. The tale is set in London’s East End in the year 1860. A mysterious Gothic adventure of a man’s quest to capture life and cheat death through photography. Septimus races against time to discover his family’s long lost legacy buried deep amongst the forgotten rivers and cellars of old London. Unbeknown to him a mysterious old woman looks on…. The story, along with its highly satirical characters escort the reader on an emotional journey into a world of intrigue, suspense and the supernatural. Atmosphere seeps out of every gulley of this twisting and ever turbulent road; darkness and light, creation and calamity. Encounter magical discoveries that will pick the pocket of your dreams for now and evermore.
A Word from the Author
The credit for giving my Victorian mystery and suspense novel “The Man Behind the Glass” wings lies predominantly at the feet of my mother Jennifer Howes. It was she who gave me the quest upon which my spark of an idea was conceived. She asked each family member to write and recite a short eerie tale to be told around the fire-side the night before Christmas. Little did I know at the time that the spark was going to turn into a blaze; a blaze of ideas that fed off all of my knowledge of Victorian London and a lifetime of inspiration.
At the point of the story’s conception I had been working as an historical researcher (for TV, radio and private clients) for fifteen years. More often than not those studies took me back to the nineteenth century and the murky waters of Dickensian London (and Britain as a whole). I was already quite familiar with the heart and the history of the city as my grandparents lived close to its core. My Irish born grandfather was an inspirational enthusiast of London, taking great pains to walk me around all of the obvious places of interest, as well as the not so obvious.
The mystique of Victorian London never ceases to excite, appal and bewitch me all at the same time. Its mysteries are endless, its allure irresistible. It was a time of immense contrasts, exploration, discovery and experimentation. Some of those fantastical discoveries were made in the light, others in almost total darkness. It is out of this world that the shadowy figure of Septimus Blackwood first emerges from the banks of the Thames. He is a man of vision and secrets, a man who seeks to combine the energies of both light and dark. A man determined to capture life and cheat death through the fledgling art of photography. Septimus is also haunted by his family’s past, and a long lost legacy, he believes to be buried deep amongst the forgotten rivers and cellars of the old city. Little does he know that an elderly woman watches, and awaits her time…
(Greg Howes, August 2017)
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