{"id":1596,"date":"2015-01-27T11:36:52","date_gmt":"2015-01-27T19:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=1596"},"modified":"2015-01-27T11:36:52","modified_gmt":"2015-01-27T19:36:52","slug":"alan-finn-things-half-in-shadow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/alan-finn-things-half-in-shadow\/","title":{"rendered":"Alan Finn: Things Half in Shadow"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"things-half-in-shadow\"<\/a>Really, this book is a lot of bank for your buck. Clocking in at over 400 pages, this book is chock full of rich narrative, coincidence, vivid setting, intriguing characters, and ghosts. I devoured it. Set in post-Civil War Philadelphia, the central character, Edward Clark, is a newspaper reporter and Civil War veteran who is assigned the task of de-bunking the city\u2019s many mediums.<\/p>\n

During any post-war period, mediums always pop up, as bereaved family members hope to reconnect with the dead. The first s\u00e9ance Edward attends is presided over by one Lucy Collins, and unfortunately for Lucy, Edward grew up in a family of magicians. He\u2019s on to her tricks and spots almost all of them.<\/p>\n

He threatens to expose her, and she threatens to expose him if he doesn\u2019t help her to de-bunk the other mediums in the city, leaving her the only one standing. Edward, a newly engaged man (to the lovely and eminently respectable Violet Willoughby), doesn\u2019t want to upset the apple cart and agrees to go along with her plan. As Lucy points out, if she exposes him, every medium in the city will know who he is and bar him from the premises.<\/p>\n

Their first stop is to the biggest, most well known medium in the city, a Mrs. Leonora Pastor. Mrs. Pastor stuns them by revealing things no one could no about their pasts and then stuns them further by dropping dead. Edward is left uncertain that she was a fake \u2013 he now believes in the spirit world \u2013 and he is united once again with Lucy Collins as both of them get to work to prove their innocence. Everyone at the s\u00e9ance is a murder suspect.<\/p>\n

Heading the investigation is Edward\u2019s old buddy Barclay, a fellow vet now high up in the Philadelphia police department. Finn is really expert at creating an entire, populated world, filled with characters who run into each other at the least opportune moment. His narrative proceeds full stop at all times and the 400 pages never felt like too many. They felt like just the right amount to tell and explain Edward\u2019s complicated story.<\/p>\n

Finn leaves the reader to sort out for themselves if the mediums and ghosts in the book are the real deal or not. He makes a case both ways, and I love a writer that assumes intelligence on the part of the reader. I loved his two central characters \u2013 Edward and Lucy assume equal importance by the end of the book. They were well rounded and comfortably at slight odds with one another. There\u2019s obviously a second book on the way and I can\u2019t wait to read it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Really, this book is a lot of bank for your buck. Clocking in at over 400 pages, this book is chock full of rich narrative, coincidence, vivid setting, intriguing characters, and ghosts. I devoured it. Set in post-Civil War Philadelphia, the central character, Edward Clark, is a newspaper reporter and Civil War veteran who is … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-1596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-historical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1596"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1598,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596\/revisions\/1598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}