The Martins of Cro' Martin, Vol. II (of II)

The second volume of Lever's panoramic novel finds Captain Harry Martin back in Paris after a long absence, only to discover that the city and his friendship with the egregious Herman Merl have lost their former luster. Merl, all flash and vulgarity, throws himself into the pleasures of fine dining and the betting ring with reckless abandon, dragging Martin into his orbit of debt and disrepute. The tension between Martin's growing disdain for his companion's coarseness and his own tangled financial entanglements forms the emotional core of this narrative. Lever, whose sharp eye for social hypocrisy made him famous, uses this strained friendship as a lens to examine Parisian society: its superficial rituals, its brutal economics of reputation, and the way class both binds and corrupts. The novel pulses with the particular anxiety of a man caught between what he knows is right and the circumstances that make doing right nearly impossible. For readers who love Victorian social fiction and stories of compromised men navigating treacherous waters of friendship and finance.