Recent not-quite-reads

Dark Sleeper, by Jeffrey E. Barlough. Barlough does a wonderful job of capturing the atmosphere of Dickensian England -- its homey joys, its warmly-glowing hospitality, its delightfully eccentric intellectuals, its coldly vicious misers and desperate criminals. I won't give away any secrets of the plot, but the cover painting of the paperback edition, depicting a Victorian coach being drawn through a mountainous, misty moonlit landscape by a pair of wooly mammoths, should suggest to the careful reader that the quaint village of Salthead may lie far, far beyond the boundaries of Queen Victoria's realm, no matter how many British mannerisms its inhabitants continue to cultivate.

Sadly, I did not read the entire book. Have I mentioned that I find Dickens atmospheric in small quantities but deadly dull in large ones? Someone with more patience might enjoy this book more than I did.