A mysterious conjurer and his unsettling companion walk fog-drenched streets where music halls mask darker performances. Crimes grow stranger, and reality seems to bend with every clue. The Somnambulist is a macabre Victorian puzzle box brimming with wit, menace, and theatrical flair.
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Start or resume Shelf TalkThese picks are popular with readers who enjoyed this book. Possible spoilers below.
In The Somnambulist, did you enjoy the sly, late-game narrator reveal and untrustworthy storytelling voice?
If what hooked you in The Somnambulist was that delicious moment when you realize the voice guiding you has been shaping the truth all along, Drood doubles down on that pleasure. Wilkie Collins narrates his thorny friendship with Charles Dickens and their descent into London’s underworld after a mysterious figure called Drood appears—yet Collins’s opium-hazed account grows increasingly suspect. Like following Edward Moon through fogbound alleys while a secret cabal pulls strings, you’ll savor how the tale’s very teller twists your footing right up to the end.
In The Somnambulist, did you enjoy a reality-bending murder investigation in a grimy, conspiratorial city?
If you loved tracking Edward Moon and his milk-drinking, mute partner through a labyrinthine case and shadowy societies, The City & the City gives you another hypnotic investigation with a mind-warping civic secret. Inspector Borlú’s murder case straddles two overlapping cities that citizens must "unsee," a procedural as strange and meticulous as Moon’s chase through clandestine meetings and stage-illusion clues. It’s the same intoxicating mix of cluework, urban rot, and hidden rules governing every encounter.
In The Somnambulist, did you enjoy cult-riddled, anything-can-happen London weirdness?
If the anarchic, surreal London of The Somnambulist—with its secret orders, prophetic oddities, and end-times schemers—was your sweet spot, Kraken is a feast. When a preserved giant squid vanishes from the Natural History Museum, curator Billy Harrow is dragged into a baroque underworld of rival cults, doomsday prophecies, and living tattoos. It’s the same madcap energy as Moon squaring off against apocalyptic plots in alleys and music halls, only spun to delirious, tentacled extremes.
In The Somnambulist, did you enjoy deadpan, grimly funny narration undercutting eldritch threats?
If you smiled at the mordant asides and gallows humor threading The Somnambulist—the way Moon’s patter and the novel’s arch voice leaven grisly plots—then The Atrocity Archives hits the same vein. Bureaucrat-spy Bob Howard battles Lovecraftian hazards with snark and spreadsheets, skewering occult horror with dry wit much like the bookish jabs and backstage patter around Moon’s conjuring. Expect laughs right beside the cosmic dread and clandestine operations.
In The Somnambulist, did you enjoy a magician-detective navigating a mostly realistic London?
If you loved watching Edward Moon blend stagecraft with sleuthing across a recognizably gritty London—while true strangeness simmered at the edges—Rivers of London is a natural next step. Probationary constable Peter Grant apprentices to a wizard-detective and investigates hauntings, river spirits, and uncanny murders, all treated with procedural rigor. It captures that same feel of practical detection rubbing shoulders with the inexplicable, minus the need for a codified magic rulebook.
