Awards
2006 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original
Synopses & Reviews
The Great Depression has bound a nation in despair and only a privileged few have risen above it: the exorbitantly wealthy...and the hucksters who feed upon them. Diego, a seventeen-year-old illegal Mexican immigrant, owes his salvation to master grifter Thomas Schell. Together with Schell's gruff and powerful partner, they sail comfortably through hard times, scamming New York's grieving rich with elaborate, ingeniously staged séances until an impossible occurrence changes everything.
While "communing with spirits," Schell sees an image of a young girl in a pane of glass, silently entreating the con man for help. Though well aware that his otherworldly "powers" are a sham, Schell inexplicably offers his services to help find the lost child drawing Diego along with him into a tangled maze of deadly secrets and terrible experimentation.
At once a hypnotically compelling mystery and a stunningly evocative portrait of Depression-era New York, The Girl in the Glass is a masterly literary adventure from a writer of exemplary vision and skill.
Review
"A fast-moving, escapist tale that pinches the dirty cheek of the precocious fifth grader in all of us....Ford has written a book that features a dog man who impersonates a dog and a snake that dies of a broken heart. That, for the record, is a winning combination." New York Times
Review
"[A] fascinating literary thriller." Booklist
Review
"Ford romps engagingly here-his Schell an intriguing scoundrel, as if Sherlock Homes had a Moriarity taint in his gene pool." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"You may gallop through [The Girl in the Glass] for entertainment, but it will go on to haunt you." Locus
Review
"The Girl in the Glass grabbed me and wouldn't let go....A spellbinding story, splendidly told." Globe and Mail (Toronto)
About the Author
Jeffrey Ford is the author of three previous story collections and eight previous novels, including the Edgar® Award-winning The Girl in the Glass and the Shirley Jackson Award-winning The Shadow Year. A former professor of writing and early American literature, Ford now writes full-time in Ohio, where he lives with his wife.