Called Back

Summary

Fog-throttled London becomes a moral labyrinth when Anthony March—lithe, luminous, heir to a fortune that glints like frost on iron—discovers that the uncle who once bounced him on a velvet knee, Dr. Manuel Ceneri, has siphoned every sovereign through ledger-legerdemain. Ceneri, a carnivorous voluptuary with a surgeon’s hands and a mortician’s heart, enlists Macari, a velvet-gloved viper from the Limehouse underbelly, to cauterise the threat of exposure with strychnine and silk. On the night the Thames smells of rusted pennies, they lure Anthony to a parlour where gaslight drips like congealed yolk; the dagger’s descent is interrupted by Gilbert Vaughan, a blind composer whose cane taps a Morse of doom. Pauline, Anthony’s sister, witnesses the shattering of her world through a French-window lattice, faints into amnesiac white-out, and awakens in a city that has forgotten her name. Believing the crime evaporated into the chimney-soot, Ceneri and Macari swagger through clubland—until the past returns wearing Vaughan’s sightless eyes and Pauline’s vengeance stitched into her trembling palms.

Synopsis

Young Anthony March, living in London, inherits a considerable amount of money, but his crooked uncle Dr. Manuel Ceneri steals it. When Anthony gets suspicious, Ceneri's partner in crime, Macari, persuades Ceneri to kill him. However, just as they commit the murder a blind man, Gilbert Vaughan, mistakenly enters the house. Anthony's sister Pauline sees the murder, faints and loses her memory. Thinking they have gotten away with the murder, Ceneri and Macari soon find out that they're in for a shock.