THE FORGER’S REQUIEM, which wraps up Bradford Morrow’s trilogy that began with THE FORGERS and continued with THE FORGER’S DAUGHTER, once again takes readers on a dark literary tour into the lives of professional forgers of classic novels.

Literary forger Henry Slader finds himself buried alive. Once he recognizes his fate, he gets his wits about him long enough to dig out of the loosely packed dirt encasing him and work his way to freedom. He was placed in a shallow grave by his two fiercest rivals: Will and Will’s daughter, Nicole.

Upon freeing himself from the earth, Slader stumbles into a nearby house and finds a library packed with fine literary classics. When he takes a few off the shelf for closer inspection, like the extremely rare novella IN THE CAGE by Henry James, he sees a dedicated inscription on the inside that he immediately identifies as a top-notch forgery. Slader then realizes he is in Will’s home.

"[T]his is a slow burn of a novel that will require patience on the part of the reader to get to the jewels that are cleverly hidden beneath the surface."

We next see Nicole traveling with friends in Kenmare, Ireland, and having no idea that Slader, who she had whacked over the head with a shovel before he was buried, was somehow still alive. She reflects on her father’s sordid past, which at one point saw him briefly jailed, and how she was brought into the forgery business. Slader eventually locates Nicole and proceeds to blackmail her into helping him out with a number of forgeries.

At the top of the list of dream forgeries is a cache of letters allegedly penned by Mary Shelley. Nicole travels to London to investigate them and gets involved in deep research to authenticate them. These passages are easily the best part of the book as I am a huge admirer of Shelley and her work.

Slader continues to hold Nicole in the palm of his hands as he claims to have photographic proof that Will murdered her mother’s brother. This information is enough to keep her doing his bidding and dig further into the Shelley case. Morrow deftly plots the action by allowing Nicole to uncover certain secrets that has her questioning everything she has seen and found, which provides the book's literary thriller elements.

The world of professional forgers is indeed fascinating, and THE FORGER’S REQUIEM will appeal to fans of classic literature. However, this is a slow burn of a novel that will require patience on the part of the reader to get to the jewels that are cleverly hidden beneath the surface.