Dark Matter

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View books by P. E. Kerr, Philip Kerr.

Strange book - Rated
I honestly don't really know what to think of this book. One would say that it has all the necessary ingredients of a great read: an original premise in Isaac Newton (who really did work for the Royal Mint) stumbling on a plot of counterfeiters with links to alchemy, Huguenots, and even the Templars. The tale is told by his assistant Christopher Ellis 30 years later after Newton has died.

And yet, and yet... somehow this story never really gripped me as I expected it to. Is it because of the language? Maybe so, because I found it to be written almost as if it wasn't only about Newton but also BY Newton, with everything described in a very detached, almost scientific way which doesn't help to get one involved in the story.

So however eagerly I read the book (somehow always expecting it to start living up to my expectations) I finished it with mixed feelings (because it never really did).

Brilliant period piece, with a Sherlock Holmes feel - Rated
It is historical fact that Sir Isaac Newton held senior positions at the royal mint from the late 1690s, and with his assistant Christopher Ellis he was involved in detecting and prosecuting numerous offences during a turbulent period in which Britain replaced its money.

Philip Kerr has taken this Newton and his assistant, and turned them into Holmes and Watson, placing them at the centre of a serious intrigue involving financial crimes, political battles and religious atrocities.
It's a brilliant period piece which explains a great deal I didn't understand about Restoration Europe. Like his other historical novels Kerr has also carefully used the language of the time, writing in a style reminiscent of Newton's contemporaries such as Pepys, but always readily understandable.

Some of the period detail is quite gruesome, and can be little uncomfortable. This is not a book for the young or seriously squeamish. However the content is appropriate given the quite dark nature of the story.

I haven't enjoyed all of Kerr's more recent works. For example "The Shot", which was a similar kind of period piece, was just too complicated. I have no such complaints about "Dark Matter" - a brilliant historical thriller.

Terrific period mystery. - Rated
A mystery which should keep even the most jaded reader intrigued and involved, Dark Matter begins like a typical Sherlock Holmes mystery, with Sir Isaac Newton interviewing Christopher Ellis to work as his assistant as Warden of the Royal Mint, and deducing all manner of personal information from clues he notices on Ellis's person.

But here the similarities end. The murders which Newton and Ellis soon investigate are part of a much broader picture of intrigue than anything in the Sherlock Holmes series, here involving the recoinage of England's silver and gold, battles against smugglers and counterfeiters, the enmity and warfare between England and France, the continuing hatred between Catholics and Protestants in both countries, the missing treasure of the Knights Templar, and alchemy, astronomy, scientific study, and even the ciphers developed a hundred years earlier by Rene Descartes.

Newton remains throughout the novel as a somewhat mysterious character, formal, scholarly, honest, and industrious, but personally remote, even from his niece, with whom he lives. Ellis, on the other hand, quickly engages the reader with his innate charm and physicality--he's an ebullient 20-year-old, as much at home in bars and brothels as he is in the lab or the Mint.

As this surprisingly compatible team investigates several grotesquely staged murders, while battling the political status quo at the Tower of London, where the Mint is located, the reader is taken on a wide-ranging and colorful tour of the city from its royal houses to its bawdy houses, its churches to its opium dens, and its bookshops to its prisons. An informer with a steel nose, a man half eaten by a lion in the Tower, a goldsmith smuggling silver to France, and real characters, such as the vulgar Daniel Defoe and the likeable Samuel Pepys, keep the reader constantly engaged.

The author cleverly and unobtrusively provides several recaps of the action and what it means within the context of the narrative, just at the point when the story may become a bit confusing, clearly remembering that the reader may be unfamiliar with this period and its history. He does burden his story with a large number of characters who appear only briefly and provide scant information, but this is a minor quibble in this ambitious and entertaining novel of enormous scope and historical perspective. Mary Whipple

What Do You Know of Newton - Rated
"Dark Matter", by Philip Kerr is primarily based upon the person of Sir Isaac Newton, and includes moments with the likes of Daniel Defoe, Samuel Pepys, and Christopher Ellis, all of who lived during late 17th Century London. The book is well written and if the final twenty pages were representative of the entire book, it would have been brilliant.

Sir Newton is hardly a historical enigma, so why Mr. Kerr chose to portray him as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous character Sherlock Holmes is not only a mystery, it makes little sense. For the Sir Newton of this historical novel bears little resemblance to the Newton that history has recorded and many biographers have documented. And Christopher Wallis bears even less resemblance to the famous Dr. Watson. The novel did not need to lean so heavily upon these other characters to work, and I have no idea why an author of Kerr's talent decided to use them.

The background players that give the story its excellent ending are The Knights Templar, and I kept hoping they would play a larger role in the book, for they essentially were the consummation at the book's close. For when the book collects itself and defines itself, it is Christianity and the faith that upholds it that are the real story in this novel. The Knights were a fascinating historical group and they deserved more prominence in the tale.

I enjoyed the book but only to a point as I have read biographies of Sir Newton. Kerr's portrayal is so far from the historical personage that it was hard to forget who the real man was, and accept this version of Newton as super sleuth. Newton was a brilliant detective of matters scientific; portraying him as a 17th Century Holmes was too derivative and unworthy of the stature of Sir Newton.