The Forger's Daughter

By: Bradford Morrow

Narrated by: Christina Delaine, Phil Thron

When a scream shatters the summer night outside their country house in the Hudson Valley, reformed literary forger Will and his wife Meghan find their daughter Maisie shaken and bloodied, holding a parcel her attacker demanded she present to her father. Inside is a literary rarity the likes of which few have ever handled, and a letter laying out impossible demands regarding its future.

After 20 years of living life on the straight and narrow, Will finds himself drawn back to forgery, ensnared in a plot to counterfeit the rarest book in American literature: Edgar Allan Poe's first, Tamerlane, of which only a dozen copies are known to have survived. Until now. Facing threats to his life and family, coerced by his former nemesis and fellow forger Henry Slader, Will must rely on the artistic skills of his older daughter Nicole to help create a flawless forgery of this stolen Tamerlane, the Holy Grail of American letters.

Part mystery, part case study of the shadowy side of the book trade, and part homage to the writer who invented the detective tale, The Forger's Daughter portrays the world of literary forgery as diabolically clever, genuinely dangerous, and inescapable, it would seem, to those who have ever embraced it.

©2020 Bradford Morrow (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Terrible Sequel and Bad Audiobook Production

Ugh. This sequel to The Forgers is frustratingly boring and unsatisfying. By employing his too-clever "unreliable narrator" gimmick in the first book, the author makes Will maddeningly unsympathetic at the end. While Morrow could pat himself on the back for springing the surprise, it also meant that any sequel was going to be tricky. Anyone who read the first book already knows that the protagonist is actually unreliable and unsympathetic. So, who cares that Will is again pursued by his old foe - you know he damn well deserves it! All his supposed concern for his family does nothing to change the reader's antipathy towards him and, worse, renders the plot ridiculous instead of gripping. Morrow refuses to explicitly divulge in this sequel the big reveal of his first book which is central to understanding Will. So, a reader who did not read the first book actually might find Will sympathetic in the sequel. Wow, another unreliable narrator gimmick. In essence, Morrow allows his unsympathetic protagonist to start fresh in the sequel and dupe the unwitting reader! Very clever - if you have no respect for your readers.
Just as bad, the audiobook production was terrible Both of the narrators make the book painful listening. The female narrator performs her part with a dreadful bottom-of-the-register melodramatic voice that borders on parody. Even worse is when she performs the part of Will, the husband. The male narrator reads his part like a radio broadcaster reporting polling numbers. Double ugh.

Skip This Book

I couldn't get through chapter one. Too long winded. And boring. Don't care what happens.

I had to keep reading

I had to keep reading to see if what I anticipated was accurate. I never really predicted anything and at the end I was glad that the good guys survived and the bad guy got what he deserved.