The Phantom of Manhattan

Where to begin? This book offers so much to complain about before the story's even started. In Forsyth's preface, he's labouring under the delusion that Gaston Leroux was an incompetent, forgotten hack who didn't know how to write his own story. He asserts that “the way poor Gaston tells it is a mess” and that the storyline should basically have been something else altogether. He talks like he's doing the sorry bastard a favour by taking a break from writing airport thrillers to make this sequel.

So, right from the outset, this “fanfic” isn't even the work of a fan, but a writer with total disdain for the original work. His criticisms are, to me, trifling and pedantic, like Leroux not giving the story an exact date and getting the technicalities of gas lamps wrong. Some of these are undoubted flubs by Leroux, but they're also beside the point of the story. I don't really care if The Phantom of the fucking Opera functions as a watertight forensic crime thriller because it isn't meant to be one. Who's reading that book and throwing it down in disgust when Leroux gets the weight of a chandelier wrong? This guy, it seems.

I also disliked his scorn for the Persian and his dismissal of everything that happens in the Persian-centric sections of the original book. So, between the physics pedantry and the Daroga slander, Forsyth's preface didn't warm me to his take on the story, and I came at it with distrust.

But after all that, there's not enough substance in The Phantom of Manhattan to warrant the author's grandstanding. The writing and presentation of the story are decent and quite intriguing. I liked the idea of switching narrator for each chapter, telling the story through the monologues, dialogues and reports of major and minor characters. However, there's very little depth on offer here. The original book's characters barely get a look in, for all Forsyth's insistence that he could write them better than Leroux. Christine's viewpoint is conspicuous by its absence, which says it all really.

The pacing is brisk, which I did enjoy, but just when the story seems to be building up to something, it's rushing to be over. It's as if the book is missing a third of its plot. The half-baked, hasty conclusion feels like the author, too, wanted this nonsense over and done with. I was left wondering what the point was, and how Forsyth, after all his righteous complaining, had managed to do so little with the source material.

Still, it's better than the truly dogshit Love Never Dies, and I assume the physics and measurements are unimpeachable, as we all want from a romance novel.