Since 1980 the big criminal gangs had moved in on the lucrative literary market and we had much to do and few funds to do it with.
Although there is plenty to give it away by the time the reader reaches this point on page two, if one didn’t realize that one were reading an alternative timeline novel by then, this line gives away the game forever. In no parallel dimension that might possibly exist would the average person ever expect to find the term “big criminal gangs” used in the same sentence as “lucrative literary market.” Despite all appearances to the contrary, however, nugget of information passed along by the narrator is not intended to be taken ironically, parodically, or satirically. What a world!
“As the Crimean War enters its one hundred and thirty-first year, pressure groups both at home and abroad are pushing for a peaceful end to hostilities.”
In this alternative timeline, the Crimean War looms large. In our timeline, this was a two-and-a-half year long war in the 1850’s that almost nobody outside of Europe but historians knows anything about other than that Florence Nightingale might possibly have been related to it somehow. As the news report quoted above indicates, in the novel’s timeline the Crimean War makes the Thirty Years War look like a skirmish between neighbors over a broken picket fence. As it usually the case in these things, the war fuels much of everything that is going on in the story in one way or another.
“The finest criminal mind requires the finest accomplices to accompany him. Otherwise, what’s the point? I always found that I could never apply my most deranged plans without someone to share and appreciate them. I’m like that. Very generous.”
As one might guess, Acheron Hades is the novel’s big bad guy. The book is dotted with similar quotes memorialized in this timeline’s version of our own 1980’s handbook for degeneracy: The Art of the Deal. His villainy is far-ranging in legend and self-promotion, but it is also quite specific to the plot at hand and the trail upon which Thursday Next sets off. Hades doesn’t just steal the original manuscript of Jane Eyre but also—through a process far too complicated to explain here—manages to kidnap the novel’s heroine as well. Now that’s what is called a strange interlude!
“The car crash was a blind! Men like Acheron don’t die that easily! Take the LiteraTec job in Swindon!”
The circumstances of this quote need a little—but not too much—context. The familiar-looking woman is the driver of a car, but she’s not driving. The car just suddenly appears. In a hospital room. And the woman’s voice carries an undeniable sense of urgency. Before she knows, the tires screech again and the car vanishes just as mysterious as it appeared. Thursday is overcome by a confluence of emotions in the wake of the encounter. The mention of the city of Swindon swells up memories from her past and the weird, unaccountable familiarity of the woman who seemed to appear specifically to deliver a message leaves her temporarily flummoxed until she almost immediately afterward is able to identify the cause of the familiarity.
