Bradford Morrow

Rare book collector, Adam Diehl, is found in his secluded home, his hands severed, his books and papers in disarray. Upon inspection, it appears he was a forger of long-dead author's signatures, which would increase the price of already valuable books many times over. Among the suspects are his sister's boyfriend, Will, who had been a prolific and talented forger and who is also our narrator.
Meghan, the deceased's sister and protagonist's girlfriend, is also in the book trade, as she owns an independent bookshop in Manhattan. She found out about Will's little hobby along with the rest of the world and stuck by him as he paid his penance. She's the best thing Will has ever had in his life, which is why, when someone starts threatening him, using Arthur Conan Doyle's handwriting, no less, he keeps it a secret, in an effort to protect her.
He doesn't know who's sending the threats nor what they want nor why they want it, all he knows is he'll do what needs doing in order to keep safe the one bit of happiness he has, and to keep the promise he's made to Meghan, which is that he'd stay out of the the forging game. But someone is trying to force his hand.
On the surface this book should have been right up my street--it's about the book world and I worked in independent bookshops for years--but it fell a little flat. The main character was a criminal, but not a very interesting one. He kept saying how solid his relationship was with Meghan and how they fell for one another at first sight, but I didn't feel it. That could be because Will wasn't a real person--at one point he talks about forgers also forging who they are and not being true humans, which I interpreted as a type of sociopathy. He definitely has that flat affect going on and not seeming to really engage with the world, only being concerned with protecting his own hide, as well as being close to only one person. I definitely don't need to like a character--any of the characters of a novel, really--but they do need to be interesting. Will wasn't.
Writing-wise it was better than most books out there, but it wasn't up to par with Morrow's The Diviner's Tale, which was excellent. The text suffered from 'had I known-itis', which is where the narrator kept telling us that things were about to get a lot worse or that his bubble of happiness was to be short-lived. It's something of which lesser authors are often guilty but I found it surprising in this author.
The plot was what kept me reading--needing to know who did it and what was going to happen next, which is why I read it in two days. It moved at a clip, which is what you want in a thriller. I didn't know where things were going and, though I worked out some things before the end, I still didn't know the particulars.
I would recommend this one to fans of John Dunning's Bookman series and people interested in literary thrillers like Matthew Pearl's books. 4/5 stars.
[I was given a free copy of this book to review.]… (more)

* My thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the opportunity to review this book. *

With an opening sentence like "They never found his hands", you can expect that you're in for a serious crime story. The Forgers does not deliver the gruesomeness that that opening suggests, but it is still a twisty murder mystery with a likeable protagonist.

The corpse in question is that of Adam Diehl, brother-in-law of notorious forger Will. Will has entertained suspicions that Adam might also have been a forger, but has kept those suspicions to himself. However the murder brings his own past back under the microscope, and he finds he needs to defend himself from his wife's suspicions, without exposing Adam. Just when he thinks that he has succeeded, he starts getting threatening letters that could only have been produced by a master forger, one at least as good as himself.

Will and his wife Meghan retreat to an Irish village while Will tries to go straight and leave his tarnished reputation in the rare book world behind him. Things are not so simple though, and trouble soon follows.

I liked the unusual milieu that this novel is set in, and the mounting tension that Will feels as his past closes in on him while he struggles to make a life beyond forgery and faking.… (more)