Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

The appearances/superficiality motif appears as early on as the first sentence in this tense, tight, but ultimately convoluted smear of a novella. Count on countenance for good & sturdy bones in a story of detection...

& yet...

Plus there are really nice framing devices on display here, a check-mark always in my book, like the letters within letters narrative, a nifty exercise, which is mighty cool. (Here, my favorite sentence from the Robert Louis Stevenson classic: "Jekyll had more than a father's interest; Hyde had more than a son's indifference." [85] Super dooper neat!)

Yet...

And then there is the fact that the main protagonists become manifested once they are uttered into existence by the status quo, the pre turn of the century Londonfolk. Rumor creates their reputations before the two, er one, ever make the center stage.

However...

I must mention that I feel as though the actual occurrence, the solved crime, what's underneath all the whispy artifices of this rudimentary detective-noir novel, is a homosexual relationship gone to extremes, to a level that's too... literary? Maybe that's a stretch. Also, I LOVE that JEKYLL sounds like jackal, as in Devil. Cute.

But

This is not worthy of the canon (!!!!). Bottom Line. Cos the whole Dual-Nature and Commingling-of-Good-and-Evil thing is overdone, stamped into the reader like some mantra that could be interpreted in many different ways and becomes, quite frankly, overly exhausted. This ain't as kitschy, or pre-kitschy-- nowhere near-- as I'd foolishly predicted. If you want something macabre AND brilliant, go to the French serial-classic "The Phantom of the Opera"!