The protagonist of Nicholas Griffin's novel The House Of Sight And Shadow is an early-18th-century British medical student named Joseph Bendix, who takes up an apprenticeship with London surgeon Edmund Calcraft after a love affair with a French courtier leaves Bendix penniless and unable to continue his experiments with anatomical theory. Bendix believes in a sort of reverse-hypochondria, which holds that an ill patient might be cured by the power of suggestion; Calcraft, meanwhile, speculates that the distilled organs of hanged criminals might have a curative effect on the frail. Working somewhat at cross purposes, master and pupil rob graves and burn the midnight oil in an effort to restore the health of Calcraft's light-sensitive daughter Amelia, whom Bendix has begun to crave despite his poor luck at love. The House Of Sight And Shadow has the framework of a gothic horror romance, full of stolen kisses by candlelight and arcane medical procedures involving bowls overflowing with blood and viscera. But Griffin, whose debut novel The Requiem Shark brought angst and complexity to the pirate adventure, here complicates the dark thriller by populating it with characters whose conflicting impulses of beneficence and lust are causing them to literally rot from within. Bendix is an especially striking figure, cursing the second-generation wealthy and vowing chastity one moment, scrounging guineas from syphilitic crime lords and accepting the favors of a prostitute the next. No character is free from muddled motivations, and that includes real-world intruders like novelist Daniel Defoe and corrupt law enforcer Jonathan Wild, who play key roles in the narrative. The realistic portrayal of deeply flawed men and women may leave some readers cold; others might be bothered by Griffin's prose style, which relates philosophical ruminations and should-be-harrowing action sequences in the same even tone, effectively throwing off the latter's pacing. But it doesn't take much deep probing to see the rich layers of meaning beneath The House Of Sight And Shadow's superficially shocking surface. Griffin sets the story in an era where science and superstition were close cousins, and in a milieu where characters invest their faith in radical methods that depend on faith itself. His heroes ignore their own moral lapses in order to more convincingly assert their beliefs, until the shadows they refuse to see suddenly swallow them whole.