* 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. ( )

Bradford Morrow may be best known as editor of the literary journal Conjunction, where he has published a very ecumenical assortment of avant garde and otherwise non-traditional poets and prose writers. For this book, however, it may be more relevant that he also has edited a collection of contemporary Gothic fiction.

That phrase describes Morrow's "The Forgers" well. The book's striking opening sentence has been quoted in most of the Goodreads reviews below, beginning an unreliable narrator's amoral story told in an often dense 19th century prose-style. Although, by contemporary standards, there are many oblique, turgid passages, the book is actually a quick read.

Certainly not the best book I've ever read, but I am interested enough to read other books by Morrow.
( )

The ending was a surprise to me, although it occurred to me early on, but I dismissed it based on the way the author spun the tale. I would read more from him, but I was sad at the end. ( )

I'm going to say this: if you start reading the Forgers and are put off by the narration style, you may not want to continue. This is a book that is shaped by Will -- what he tells you, what he doesn't, and how. If you don't click with him, this is going to be a slog.

But if you do click with him, you're in for a story that winds its way through rare books and forgeries. It's a sort of... academic wild ride. ( )

I chose this book because I thought a book about books (even forgeries) would be interesting. I listened to the audio version of the book.

The narration is done by the character of Will--a forger who was caught and has supposedly gone on the straight and narrow. The narration is very flat. As a result, it often seems like the plot is going nowhere.

I was surprised at how many things WIll kept from Meghan (his girlfriend and later wife). He wanted to protect her--but after knowing the ending, I think he wanted to protect himself as well.

I wondered why, when he got a letter that appeared to claim that the writer had killed Adam, he didn't turn it over to his lawyer or the authorities--or at least show it to someone, even if they didn't believe him or thought he'd written it himself (in the case of the authorities. I would hope his lawyer would believe him!) rather than just going along with the blackmail scheme. I guess he was trying not to call attention to himself with the authorities--though he made some foolish choices when it came to Slater.

I thought the ending was a bit confusing (at least in the audio verison). One sentence he and Meghan have had their first child and moved back to New York. The next, he's talking about he and Meghan having separate apartments. It took me a bit to realize that he was going back to the beginning of the book and confessing to the crime. Now I worry that Meghan is married to a psychopath! ( )