Hmm. I don't know that I'd read Vance again. I have some complaints about his writing style. For exposition, he doesn't seem to vary his sentence lengths, which causes fatigue. And he almost seems to write with a thesaurus at his elbow, choosing formal or archaic words when simple ones would be more

This is a piece of period fiction, set in a New York City with horse drawn cabs and primative elevators, sky scrapers and ladies who wear gloves out of habit. The heroine, the lady in grey, goes unnamed for most of the book and has the same tarnished independence we see in early Nancy Drew books- sh

Interesting premise. Two problems: I didn't like the swooning female character, and I thought there was frequently far too much verbiage, e.g.: "She was then more beautiful than aught that ever he had dreamed of. Such hair as was hers, woven seemingly of dull flames, lambent, witching!" You mileage