With surprising but plausible twists, and a visceral, bawdy evocation of Victorian London, Bayard has crafted a page-turner of a thriller that is elevated beyond its genre by its endearingly flawed hero for whom nothing human is alien. The quest becomes more quixotic when evidence points to the aristocracy, abetted by a corrupt police force, but with Philomela taking an active role, the quartet narrow in on their target. With the assistance of a singing street urchin called Colin the Melodious and a maimed retired seafarer, he pursues the source of her torment and its connection with another child whose branded body was dumped in an obscure alley. His defenses are penetrated when he encounters Philomela, a 10-year-old waif who has been mysteriously abused. Haunted by his failure to connect with his father, as well as by his father's ghost, Timothy has developed a thick skin to guard against the oppressive misery endemic to 1860s London. Timothy Cratchit has found a niche in a brothel as the tutor to its madam. Having lost his parents and become estranged from his remaining family as well from as reformed Ebenezer Scrooge, Mr. Bayard's first two novels ( Fool's Errand Endangered Species) were contemporary romantic comedies, a far cry from his third, an audacious and triumphant entertainment that imagines the post– Christmas Carol life of Tiny Tim, transformed from an iconic representation of innocent suffering ('the iron brace was bought by a salvager long ago, and the crutch went for kindling') into a fully realized young adult struggling to find his place in a cruel world.

Mr timothy louis bayard