How can you not want to read a book with a title like that? And the book doesn’t disappoint. This thing is 352 pages chock-full of late 19th century sensation, intrigue, and occasional bouts of madness.
This story combs through the entirety of the bizarre Druce-Portland affair, a famously strange set of legal cases taking place in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. The press and public obsessed over it for more than a decade. It’s hard to imagine any case finding the same level of notoriety in today’s media saturated landscape. It all started in 1897 when a widow named Anna Maria Druce petitioned the court to exhume the body of her late father-in-law, T.C. Druce. The reasoning behind her petition was that she believed her father-in-law had really been the eccentric 5th Duke of Portland and that the duke had faked Druce’s death. Since the duke had fathered no children, she claimed that her son was the heir to the dukedom and the Portland fortune. Anna Maria’s story might seem far-fetched to us, but back then it was really common for people to have secret identities. Even Dickens had a second, secret life. Throw in a weirdo duke who keeps to himself and can’t seem to stop building a massive, secret network of tunnels and you have the recipe for long-lasting intrigue.
In this instance, truth really is stranger than fiction. Step aside Kardashians, these Edwardians wrote the book on how to ramp up the drama. Eatwell did a great job with her research, but her writing is just as impressive. This is such a complicated story with many different motivations and strange characters. It would have been easy to confuse the reader or inelegantly tie everything together, but she managed to string the story together in a clear and entertaining way. I couldn’t wait to read the next batch of crazy shenanigans in store for me after every page turn.
