Marley

"Marley was dead: to begin with," as Charles Dickens wrote in the opening line of A Christmas Carol, but as a matter of logic there must have been a time in Scrooge's life when he was not. In Marley, Jon Clinch (Belzoni Dreams of Egypt) imagines a hostile partnership, one that makes Scrooge's fortune and forges the chains that bound the first ghost who visited him in the classic story. From the time they meet in school, Marley shows a talent for persuasion and deception while Scrooge's gifts lie with managing the financial books. Their shipping company prospers while they skirt legality, but Scrooge's beloved Belle Fairchild, a member of a family of dedicated abolitionists, will not marry him so long as Scrooge and Marley deal in the slave trade. Even as the date for the trade to be outlawed in England approaches and eventually passes, Marley resists giving up the business, and he and Scrooge enter a shadow war to ruin the other while protecting their own assets.

Clinch's prose, both accessible and old fashioned, delights with sentences such as "The deliveryman has a wooden leg that belongs to him, and a horse and wagon that don't." Readers will be enchanted by the Dickensian atmosphere and style, whether it be a foreboding description of a sordid corner of London or understanding a character in a moment thanks to an aptly chosen name. This novel's humor, warmth and charm demonstrate Clinch's right to build on Dickens's legacy. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library

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