PRAISE FOR THE FORGER'S REQUIEM
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One of Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2025!
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A New York Times Book Review Most Exciting Release in Thrillers for January 2025!
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“The Forger's Requiem opens with a cracker of a scene: An unconscious man wakes up to the horrifying discovery that he has been buried alive.... He escapes, stumbling into a nearby house whose occupants are away. Its elegant printing press and library filled with rare books spur him to remember who he is: Henry Slader, a high-end literary forger and part of a shadowy subculture rife with professional jealousy, personal rivalry and murderous impulses. (The house is owned by his avowed enemy, the possibly insane Will Gardener.) Morrow alternates between Slader’s story and the parallel adventures of Nicole, Will’s precocious 20-something daughter. She’s an adept forger herself. In a book full of blackmail, murder and other misdeeds, forgery turns out to be the most exciting kind of crime.”
—New York Times Book Review, Sarah Lyall
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“Grounded in scholarship, the novel does more with literary references than is usually the case. . . It’s a novel in constant movement, beginning in upstate New York and concluding with high drama at Shelley’s grave in England. Bad things happen to a lot of people but for [literary forger Henry] Slader, it’s all worth it: “In heady moments he wondered if his accomplishments weren’t comparable to those of the authors themselves.” An entertaining blend of detective thriller and literary investigation.”
—Kirkus Reviews
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“Morrow offers fascinating insights into the literary forger’s art. Although this is the concluding volume to the author’s trilogy (The Forgers, The Forger’s Daughter), it can be read as a dark, twisty standalone thanks to plenty of backstory.”
—firstCLUE Magazine
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“In this spellbinding conclusion to a trilogy, literary forger Henry Slader returns from the dead (not quite literally, but close) with one thing on his mind: revenge. The target of his obsession is Will, the reformed (well, mostly) forger and star of the previous two books, The Forgers (2014) and The Forger’s Daughter (2020). You don’t need to have read those to enjoy this one, but, just in case, the author provides a brief summary of the events leading up to this novel. And what a novel it is: a brilliantly constructed story of revenge, redemption, deception, and betrayal. Will and Henry, and also Will’s daughter Nicole, are such vividly drawn characters that we connect with them on an emotional level: we feel Henry’s seething hatred, Will’s trepidation, and Nicole’s increasing desperation. Spectacularly well written and fiendishly clever, this is both a terrific conclusion to a trilogy and a wonderfully satisfying standalone.”
—Booklist, David Pitt​
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“This title conclude’s Morrow’s trilogy about the heated rivalry between two literary forgers, Will and the savage Henry Slader. It’s a compelling tale of decades-long hatred. This book starts with Slader clawing his way out of a grave, having been buried alive after an attempt to murder Will. Slader needs money, so when he recuperates, he blackmails Will’s painter daughter Nicole into forging a string of letters from Mary Shelley, a literary find that will be worth a fortune at auction. How he blackmails her is a shocker, changing ones reading of events from an earlier tome in the series. It ends in a blood confrontation at Mary’s grave when Nicole arrives to deliver the letters to him. Despite the air of paranoia that charges the novel, the narrative pace is slow. There’s time to describe how one produces a good forgery and to lay out Nicole’s veneration of the dead woman whose past she defiles by falsifying Mary’s words and feelings.
VERDICT: An out-of-the-ordinary treat for serious fiction readers. Distinct in subject matter but not in tone, this book echoes Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Poe’s fevered tales.”
—Library Journal, David David Keymer​
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“The newest installment in this sophisticated mystery series continues the intrigues of rival forgers, this time with an emphasis on a daughter’s revenge and an intricate puzzle built from forged Mary Shelley letters.”
—Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Editor-in-Chief
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