In 1866, Walter Moody arrives in the gold-mining town of Hokitika, New Zealand, where he interrupts a secret council of twelve men. They are gathered to discuss a series of unsolved crimes involving a wealthy hermit’s death, a vast sum of hidden gold, and a troubled sex worker discovered unconscious. The narrative follows a complex structural grid where characters correspond to zodiac signs and planetary movements. As the perspective shifts, legal depositions and flashbacks reveal a web of blackmail, shipping fraud, and opium use binding the settlers together.
This novel serves readers who enjoy intricate puzzle-solving and formalist literature. It attracts those interested in the Victorian sensation novel and the technical application of astrology to plot architecture. The audience gains a granular understanding of colonial frontier economics and the nineteenth-century legal system. By the final page, the reader reconstructs a chronological timeline from fragmented testimonies, walking away with a completed map of how individual greed and celestial cycles dictate the movement of wealth and human fate.
- Published
- 2013
- Language
- EN
