Philip Pullman's blockbuster trilogy His Dark Materials is enjoying a double success at the moment. It's the hit sell-out stage play to see at the theatre in London and the three novels themselves have knocked Harry Potter fairly and squarely from the top of the best-seller lists.
It has been a slow burn for His Dark Materials to get to the fantastic popularity it's currently enjoying and Dark Materials mania can only get bigger when the planned movie of the novels goes into production.
Clearly, Pullman is all the rage right now. He has readers of all ages and his legions of fans are eager to read everything he has written. The Shadow in the North was first published in 1986 and has recently been repackaged and republished in the wake of the Dark Materials phenomenon.
It's a very different story from His Dark Materials but it's just as exciting and original. Pullman is a storyteller who knows how to spin a cracking yarn and The Shadow in the North is an intelligent, superbly-written book that will grip older readers and not let them go until the final chapter.
There is something cosy and satisfying about losing yourself in a well-told atmospheric mystery thriller like The Shadow in the North. Bits of the characterisation might be implausible and shaky at times, but that doesn't matter because the plot is a cracker.
The story is set in Victorian London in 1878. Our heroine, Sally Lockhart, is an independent young lady who runs her own business as a financial adviser. Her friend Fred Garland has a photography business as well as running a detective agency on the side. This is a very promising set-up for a classic tale of mystery. We have the feisty hero and heroine and we have the dark and misty setting of old London. Hang onto your chair. This is going to be a suspenseful ride.
When one of her clients loses a vast amount of money in a shipping firm, Sally becomes suspicious about why the firm went under. By coincidence, Fred encounters a theatre magician who is terrified because his life is in danger.
