“My finest, ferocious Caravaggio style”—that was his own phrase for his later manner; and that was the style I was aiming at, an interplay of light and shadow that would rivet the attention and, ultimately, draw the eye to darkness.

At the beginning of Doris Langley Moore’s deliriously entertaining final novel, bookseller and author Quentin Williams has just received the royalties (just over £4) from his two published biographies. In his resulting doldrums he perversely tries to impress a smug American manuscript dealer, hinting that he may have unearthed a copy of Lord Byron’s lost memoirs, famously burned by his friends just after his death. Buying time with elaborate tales about the manuscript’s location, he sets about an audacious forgery, focusing on the scandalous style of Byron’s later writings.

Quentin is also trying to impress his girlfriend, a smart, beautiful model who may very well be out of his league and whose savvy intellect, when Quentin piques her interest in Byron, becomes his biggest obstacle. The unforeseen complications of his deception culminate at a gathering of elite Byron scholars—including none other than Doris Langley Moore herself!