The Moving Finger

As the blurb above says, this is the story of a wealthy MP’s experiment with a young man. The MP (who’s also a knight and a wealthy landowner) is walking his estate when he happens across the boy, and after a conversation, takes it into his head to give the boy money and see what he’ll make of himself. Unfortunately, he also tells the boy that if he fails, he’d be better off killing himself, and that is the fatal flaw in the scheme. Years later, the boy, now a young man, turns up again, educated, well-dressed and wealthy. However, there’s an air of suspicion about those missing years, and his benefactor takes an immediate dislike to him.

The book has a strong background of occultism, a major craze of the time, which is quite interesting. Apart from that, I didn’t really like it much. I found it very slow going, and it just didn’t click with me. There weren’t many ‘startling revelations’ either. None of the characters were particularly sympathetic, and none of the love affairs (apart from Lois’s) rang true.