Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem

First edition. 8vo. Pp. [iv], 282. Maroon cloth boards, lettered in gilt to spine; scarlet endpapers. Jacket painting by Alan Baker. Published as The Trial of Elizabeth Cree in the US.

Toning to block page edges, else Fine.

Author's eighth novel. Murder mystery tale featuring a panoply of real and imagined characters, and set in the world of Victorian music hall. A film adaptation directed by Juan Carlos Medina and starring Olivia Cooke, Bill Nighy and Douglas Booth, from a script by Jane Goodman, premiered at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival. The film is dedicated to Alan Rickman, who died in January 2016 from pancreatic cancer, and was originally cast in the leading role. The opera Elizabeth Cree by Kevin Puts, based on the novel, and with a libretto by Mark Campbell, was given its world premiere by Opera Philadelphia in September 2017.

"Ackroyd has pulled off the greatest coup of all, a foursquare crime novel as aesthetically pleasing as it is morally shocking." –The Independent on Sunday