Secrecy - Hardcover

'A novel rich as the past it conjures up, weaving a story as playful and disturbing as the strange wax sculptures that its hero gives life to.' --Sarah Dunant

'Thomson's novels have met with a remarkable uniformity of critical acclaim... Delivered via Thomson's habitual Rolls-Royce prose, Secrecy builds to a page-turning climax' -Guardian

'This is a book that scores top marks for atmosphere, for the way in which the smell, and look , of pre-18th century Florence is conveyed, for the cinematic sense of menace that lurks round every street corner, every candle-lit arras, and every formal garden. The description of the method by which Zummo works for 30 hours to take a plaster cast of the corpse, and the depiction of the final object, with its own hair, and glass eyes from Murano, is chillingly brilliant and sinister. A superb depiction of a pre-Enlightenment world, shimmering with superstitions, repression, and incomprehension, and a plot that really is masterly.' --Financial Times

'Rupert Thomson's bewitching narrative is suffused with the stuff of dreams and nightmares. It's also intensely atmospheric, and Thomson is as superb on changes of light and weather as he is on Florence's architectural gems.' -Daily Mail

'An impressive historical adventure written in an accomplished prose ... Thomson excels in suggesting a strong sense of place ... He is also determinedly inventive, succeeding in finding new ways to describe weather, nature, and the workings of the human mind ... this is a rich and intriguing work by a writer in command of his material. There is a pleasurable phrase to be found on every page.' --Literary Review

'Scene after scene trembles with breath-stopping tension on the edge of bliss or dread. No one else writes quite like this in Britain today. Newcomers to his work who open this box of secrets will hurry to snatch others from the shelf.' --Independent

'Thomson richly and compellingly imagines the life of the Sicilian wax sculptor Gaetano Zummo ... [it is] in his eye for the gothic and uncanny that Thomson excels.' -Sunday Times

'Like a luxurious art-house film, seducing you with its beautifully paced, beautifully framed images ... If this easy, elegant prose is nothing more than surface, then it is gratifying that Secrecy also has depths, even chasms ... I don t doubt there is research here, but it is Thomson s subconscious that rules the past in this book, and I bend the knee before it.' --Independent on Sunday

'Thomson transcends genre pretty effortlessly. He doesn't scrimp on the many satisfactions of a historical novel and he provides an unstintingly gripping thriller plot into the bargain. But what lifts Secrecy to a more rarefied level altogether is the visionary imagination that overlays the scrupulously worked structures those genres demand. It informs the brilliance of Thomson's characterisation, from the morbid monomania of a tormented Cosimo, to the brutish, coiled savagery of the Dominican enforcer Stufa, to the ghostly sadness of a neglected child. Along with a particular poetic gift for laying the exquisite alongside the visceral, it enables him to evoke Florence's peculiarly sinister magic to perfection, and to thread together the real, the historical and the purely imagined with such loving attention that I defy readers to see the join. Indeed, the join becomes irrelevant.' --Guardian

'Thomson's writing is pitch-perfect here. His prose is as clear and limpid as water, his ear finely attuned to the timbre of the period though mercifully free from archaisms, his characters drawn with subtlety and wit. The details are pin-sharp, but sparing enough not to weigh down the story. Instead, there is a mesmerising quality to the unfolding of the narratives and a sense of ellipsis that keeps it hovering on the t --Hampshire Society

Another spellbinder in prose, Rupert Thomson with Secrecy proved that he can evoke the past with all the eerie and sinister panache of his contemporary fiction. --'Books of the Year' chosen by Boyd Tonkin, Independent

With Secrecy [Rupert Thomson] has hit the spot. --Hampshire Society

Zummo - a 17th-century prodigy and creator of figures so realistic they look as though they might draw breath - has spent his life fleeing his past. Summoned to the Medici court by the Grand Duke, a man of holy devotions and hidden longings, Zummo finds himself in a city riddled with hypocrisy and contradictions, where adulterers are publicly flogged, while within the palace walls members of the court indulge their nefarious pleasures. Commissioned by the Grand Duke to sculpt a life-size Venus from wax, Zummo scours the streets for inspiration. But 1690s Florence is a place of unforseen dangers and secrets still more devastating than his own, and when a young woman's body is found on the banks of the Arno, Zummo suspects that the source of vice has its bed in the Medici court. As he proceeds with his creation, he begins to wonder whether this perfect woman will be his salvation or his downfall. Set in a Florence blighted by corruption and austerity, Secrecy is a tour de force of whispered pleasures and startling revelations. It is a scintillating, breathtaking read from a novelist at the height of his powers.