This is a long, sprawling, peculiar novel, but one that I always enjoy going back to. I forget, every time I reread it, how wonderful and strange an adventure it is! Lippard is a minor figure in American letters, inspired by early American masters such as Charles Brockden Brown and popular French novelists such as Eugen Sue. The Quaker City is certainly a flawed work, but it is only more human, engaging and approachable because of this fact. Lippard was no master of plot structure or narrative technique; in fact, he wasn't much of a craftsman at all, regarding the nuances and fine textures of language. However, he was a writer gifted with a dizzingly original, and sometimes grotesque, imagination. The Quaker City is the kind of book that you can't pot down, although part of you sometimes wants to. His tale of the intrigues and iniquities lurking beaneath the surface of Victorian Philadelphia will shock and amaze. I especially recommend this novel for fans of Caleb Carr, Egdar Allan Poe, and Robertson Davies.