Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Slow, Dark, Brooding and those are the nicest things I could say. This is one of the very few books I have truly wished I could return and get my money back. I love historical mysteries - but I didn't care what happened in this one because the characters were so uninteresting.
Rating: 
Summary: A successful parody
Review: The market has recently been deluged with authors trying to out-Mitchell Mitchell, out-Fleming Fleming, or out-Conan Doyle Conan Doyle. Most of these are nothing more than pulp fiction. Bayard's Dickens parody, on the other hand, complements the original in many ways.
MR. TIMOTHY does justice to Dickens in the way Bayard handles the grown-up Tim. Besides the limp, this Tiny Tim is nothing like the original. He's a cynical chap who's disappointed in himself for taking Scrooge's money. He's reduced to working in a bawdy house, teaching the madame how to read and write.
The plot is rather predictable. Bayard has transplanted a repugnant 21st century curse to the 19th century, pederasty. A young girl is found dead, branded with the letter "G"; then another girl is found with the same brand on her upper arm. The cause of death is unknown but the dead girls have frazzled, bloody fingernails. A homeless waif, Philomela, seems a likely candidate to become the next victim, and Tim becomes her protector.
Like Dickens, Bayard does his best work with minor characters. There's an Artful Dodger named Colin the Melodius, who serves as a sidekick to Tim. Then there's Gully, a retired sea captain who trolls the Thames for dead bodies. Timothy sometimes moonlights for Gully. Like Dickens, Bayard gives each of these minor characters a memorable characteristic. In Gully's case it's cats. His landlady is a cat lover; she has dozens of them, and they drive Gully crazy. But without a good villain you don't have much of a story and there's a good one here, in razor-wielding ex-policeman Rebbeck.
Timothy is also haunted by the ghost of his father. He sees him everywhere, but when he tries to make contact the man transforms into a stranger. Philomela has the same affliction. It's nice to think that our fathers watch over us, even after death.
Sure, some of this is a little hokey, but then again so was Dickens.
Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining but poorly edited, researched
Review: This book will be most appealing to those who know least about 19th-Century England. It's an entertaining story marred by scores of obvious mistakes--Bayard undertook the very ambitious project of writing in Victorian English, and his language often rings false to my ears. A typical example is the use of "fall" for autumn, which is quite rare in British English except for the expressions "spring and fall" and "fall of the year." And his Cockney characters add an "s" to infinitives, which I have never heard of in any dialect of English. Bayard also seems to think that a belief in the Trinity is characteristic of "papists" as opposed to Anglicans.
Of course, lots of people won't notice or won't care about such things, and they should find Mr. Timothy engaging, if somewhat conventionally melodramatic toward the end. For me, this novel increases my respect for real pros like Patrick O'Brian.
Rating:
Summary: A Christmas Carol Part 2
Review: This is a sequel to A Christmas Carol, starring a grown up Tiny Tim Cratchit. It's a fine book, but it's not the book that Dickens would have written, had he chosen to do so. For one thing, this book has some curse words in it that Dickens wouldn't have been allowed to use even if he wanted to. But the vulgarities here are appropritate to the characters, so I have no objections to them. Louis Bayard does a fine job of evoking the London of 1860, and I think a lot of people will enjoy this book. But some people may be disappointed that Ebenezer Scrooge has a relatively small part in this book.
Rating:
Summary: What If.....
Review: Tiny Tim from Dickens "A Christmas Carol" is now all grown up and living in a whore house. That alone was enough to make me want to read this book. Wonderfully imagined by Louis Bayard, Tim becomes obsessed with the bodies of two young girls who both bear the same brand on their bodies. It's tone and pacing are reminiscent of Caleb Carr's "The Alienist",as the mystery unfolds in London's dark underbelly. Peppered with characters from the source material it serves as a dark and thrilling "sequel" to a beloved classic. An enjoyable read.
Rating: 
Summary: dark Victorian Gothic
Review: Tiny Tim is tiny no longer. He is a twenty-three year old man who no longer needs a crutch to walk. The only sign of his childhood malady is a pronounced limp that hurts at certain times of the years. Haunted by his father's death, he has distanced himself from the rest of the Cratchits and even his uncle Ebenezer Scrooge. He lives in a brothel teaching the madam how to read and when his money runs out, he looks for treasures to be found in the Thames River at low tide.One day he finds the dead bodies of two young girls that have a brand on their upper arm, the same type that he saw on a dead child in a London alleyway. When Philomela, a ten year old girl, comes into his life trying to escape a wealthy and powerful aristocrat, Timothy finds that to keep his own humanity he must rescue her from those who branded her and put them out of business. This dark Victorian Gothic is a moving and powerful tale of where good and evil resides side by side in London of 1860. Louis Bayard has written an outstanding morality thriller that has Mr. Timothy risking his own life, time and time again to help a poor and helpless orphaned girl who is already hardened by the knocks life has thrown at her. Timothy finds an unexpectedly ally in a street smart urchin who is wise beyond his years and refuses to let the evil that lurks around each corner get a grip on him. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: You little Dickens . . . ( just had to use that)
Review: Until last year I was a fallen-away English major. I don't know why, but after getting my MA I just stopped reading novels. About a year ago I figured I'd check out contemporary best-selling fiction after seeing how much pleasure a new friend of mine was having. I read a sampling of best-selling authors: Dan Brown, Dean Koontz, Eric Garcia, and a few others whose names I can't remember. I was surprised at how bad the stuff was. I mean really bad, for example: "My watch was digital, but I could hear my opportunity for action tick-tick-ticking away." ("Odd Thomas," Dean Koontz.) These books read like they were written in a week. Then I came across "Mr. Timothy" by Louis Bayard. Bayard is a tremendous writer. His plot in "Mr. Timothy" has such forward momentum that you can't put it down. His characters (e.g., Colin the Melodious and Captain Gully) rival those drawn by Dickens. His writing style is superb: "...a hard damp fist of wind, pressing our eyes back in their sockets. It whets itself on the corners of buildings, then surges down the streets, centrifugal and centripetal all at once... ." Read this book only if you want hours of enjoyment.
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Christmas present
Review: Usually I am turned off by an author who rides the coat tails of a previous work of fiction, especially a work as famous as "The Christmas Carol". Mr. Bayard did a fine job in describing the evolution of the characters lives and create an interresting & fast paced plot in such a way as to make this work very satisfying indeed. There were morals and life truths added and I had some different observations from the other reviewers but will allow the readers their own fresh experience. I recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Clever twist on a popular character
Review: What initially drew me to this book was the expanding story of Tim Cratchet (tiny Tim of a Christmas Carol). When a Christmas Carol ends, you feel that everyone lives happily ever after because Scrooge uses his money to make everyone's life infinitely better. The author does an excellent job of presenting a complex and facinating character in Tim. Tim is more than just a crippled boy who got healed. He is now grown up and dealing with the tragedy of his father's passing, accepting money didn't make everything better, and finding the courage to help a small girl he barely knows.
While I found this book to be very good, I only gave it 4 stars out of 5 because the mystery/suspense story wasn't very original. I was more interested in Tim's character rather than the mystery surrounding young girls turning up dead in London. However, I would recommend it as a facinating read.
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