The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

This year, for the first time ever, I had read 5 of the 6 finalists for the Booker Prize before it was announced--but as fate would have it, the sixth one, this book, won.  It is an epic novel, 900 pages in all, that details a murder mystery that is convoluted from begining to end, and a cautionary tale about love and greed.

It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a woman who has worked as a protitute and is an opium addict has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely patterned as the night sky.  It is simply told but the scope of the deception and the intrigue is slowly rolled out in extenisve detail, leaving the reader with sympathies towards some and recognition of the venal qualities of man in others.  The author is a word smith of the highest order, and while the book is long, one is disappointed that there isn't more when it is done.