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What’s it all about?
Mayhem is set in the height of the Jack the Ripper murders, but body parts found at New Scotland Yard are definitely the work of a different killer, no matter how much the authorities wish it wasn’t. Thomas Bond is the police surgeon working on both cases, and as he delves into the murders he begins to suspect that something more supernatural than a rampaging serial killer is at work in London.
Why did I want to read it?
Serial killers, Jack the Ripper, Victorian London, what’s not to like? Plus although I had a couple of her e-books I hadn’t read any of Sarah Pinborough’s books and wanted to give her a try, partly due to the subject matter and partly because she is great fun to follow on Twitter (there’s that word again).
What did I think of it?
I liked it a great deal. It was a very interesting experience reading it so soon after Drood (reviewed earlier) as there are some similarities in the use of the supernatural, the main character’s tendency to dabble in drugs, the mix of real and fictional characters and events. I thought this was much more successful; I liked Thomas Bond very much and found his struggle with opium and the effect it had on him much more sympathetic, as were the domestic elements in the story contrasting with the grimness of the crimes being investigated. But I don’t want to dwell too much on comparisons with someone else’s work, this is a really good novel.
Conclusion
Recommended. I’m going to be searching out more of Sarah Pinborough’s work, although disappointed that the next volume in this series won’t be published until 2015.
This was a read for RIP VIII
What’s it all about?
In The Memory of Blood the Peculiar Crimes Unit get called in to deal with the death of a child thrown from his bedroom window while elsewhere in the apartment his parents hold a party for the cast and crew of a play being performed in the theatre owned by the child’s father. It’s a PCU case because the door was locked, there seems to be no forensic evidence, and, well, there’s a life-size puppet of Mr Punch on the floor. Supernatural activity or human agency? Oooh.
Why did I want to read it?
My love for the Bryant & May series is well-documented on this blog. I’ve read the lot in order and wasn’t going to miss this one.
What did I think?
Loved it. I am a sucker for stories about the theatrical world and this one is chock full of corruption, venality and oddness amongst the suspects, plus a nice political back story for the assistant stage manager and the spectre of Home Office disapproval hanging over the case. As always I learned loads – about London, the theatre, Punch and Judy and much more. Didn’t work out who the murderer was which was nicely satisfying in a strange way. The series just gets better and better.
Conclusion
If you haven’t read any of the Bryant & May books, why ever not? Get on with it. You won’t be disappointed.
This was a read for RIP VIII
What’s it all about?
Let’s use the words of the narrator, one Wilkie Collins, to describe what we’re talking about here:
This story shall be about my friend (or at least about the man who was once my friend) Charles Dickens and about the accident that took away his piece of mind, his health, and some might whisper, his sanity
The story kicks off with the Staplehurst railway accident that Dickens was involved in while travelling home from Paris with his mistress Ellen Ternan. While trying to assist those injured in the accident Dickens comes across a mysterious and rather ghoulish figure who becomes known to him as Drood. Dickens then drags Collins into his obsession, which leads them to investigate the underworld of London, with all the crime, squalor and danger that involved. And not a little madness. And quite a lot of death.
Why did I want to read it?
I’ve had mixed fortunes with the works of Dan Simmons. I read The Song of Kali in 2009 and really struggled with it, finding it a little too grim for my tastes. But I had also read The Terror the year before and absolutely loved it. The combination of real literary figures and a Gothic sensibility promised by Drood was very attractive.
What did I think of it?
Well. I finished reading this in the middle of September and I’m still not sure what I think. I was drawn in by the early part of the book and cracked on with the story which promised a great deal, but somewhere around the middle, when the focus shifts almost entirely to Collins and his problems I began to get a bit bogged down and actually stopped reading it for a bit. But I was determined to finish it and it did pick up again in the last third. It is completely mad. Although I have to say that it seems pretty authentic in its representation of both the central characters and all levels of society at that time.
Conclusion
There is a quote towards the end of the book where Collins says:
You never cared about my part of this memoir. It was always Dickens and Drood, or Drood and Dickens, which kept you reading
And maybe that is the problem for me, insufficient Drood. So fair to say that my response to the novel is ambivalent; glad I read it but not a favourite and *whispers* too long.
It has made me want to finally read Armadale though.
For a more positive review you should visit Roxploration who discusses the book here.
This was a read for RIP VIII.
So, the first of a flurry of mini-reviews to clear my backlog and leave me with a relatively clean slate for 2014. Apologies in advance for swamping timelines and feeds and whatnot but it has to be done!
What’s it all about?
So London Falling is basically a police procedural which takes an unexpected turn. DI James Quill is managing an undercover op as part of an investigation into London’s organised crime when it all goes horribly wrong and his main target is killed in a gruesome and unusual manner, and it becomes clear that there is something evil lurking around London. Cue the creation of a team of misfits shunned by their colleagues and using unorthodox methods to get to the bottom of something very old. There’s a witch. There’s a talking cat. There’s a football connection. And there’s a lovely set up for what is clearly going to be a series.
Why did I want to read it?
I like Paul Cornell; I follow him on Twitter, I’ve got his Wolverine comics on my iPad and he’s written some cool stuff for Doctor Who. I liked the premise for the novel, especially as I’m a sucker for anything in which the history and mythology of London is as big a part of the story as the human characters.
What did I think of it?
Loved it. Read it over a couple of days, felt the story pulling me along, really wanted to know how it was all going to work out. It would be lazy to say that it’s similar to the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch and Christopher Fowler‘s Bryant & May books, both of which I love deeply. London Falling is grittier than the former and not quite as peculiar (peculiar is a positive word in this context) as the latter but they do all complement each other very nicely.
Conclusion
Enjoyed it a great deal and am looking forward to the next one (The Severed Streets, due out here in May)
This was a read for RIP VIII.
I am a huge fan of Christopher Priestley, having read all three volumes of his Tales of Terror Series, and as part of RIP VI his excellent ghost story Dead of Winter (reviewed here), a real gem. So as soon as I found out that Mister Creecher was being issued I had to get a copy and it hasn’t lingered long on the TBR pile.
So it is 1818, and we meet Billy, on the streets, ill, and turned into a pickpocket after running away from the chimney sweeper who treated him cruelly. He stumbles across an enormous man, apparently dead, lying in a side street, but as he is about to rob the body he is accosted by members of a street gang. But before they can beat him, the mysterious body rises from the ground and does them serious damage. And so we meet Mister Creecher, and his relationship with Billy begins.
Mr C looks after Billy during his illness and they form something of a bond, though Billy is very aware of the strangeness of his new companion and in exchange for food, shelter and some assistance in frightening potential robbery victims into parting with their valuables, Billy simply has to follow one man around London. But that man happens to be Victor Frankenstein.
This is a wonderfully different telling of part of the Frankenstein story. The creature is a compelling character, a mix of intelligence, brawn and childish desires, especially for the mate that Frankenstein has promised him. His recognition of his otherness is both touching and sad, and his desire to not be the only one of his kind, while filling Billy with horror, is the driver that moves him on.
But it is Billy who is really the heart of the story, as he works his way from street urchin to more sophisticated criminal before the events that will turn him into a character that some of us will know from another famous 19th century novel. There are clues to Billy’s identity for those that want to see them, but I’m not going to give it away here as it is part of the impact of the novel.
There are some lovely literary references and in-jokes which I found really enjoyable, and some real historical figures popping up here and there, most notably the Shelleys. Priestley paints a really effective picture of London at the time and what it was like to be an outcast child with no hope other than the workhouse or the type of hard manual labour which we would consider abuse today.
I have to confess that I haven’t read either of the novels from which the main characters are drawn, a bit surprising in relation to Frankenstein given my love of things gothic but I tried once when I was a teenager, and found it really hard going in comparison to Dracula.
But this is an excellent, creepy, atmospheric story which has made me consider giving Frankenstein another chance.
Heartily recommended.
So Moon Over Soho is the second in a series of books which began with Rivers of London which I reviewed here earlier this year, and is more of the same; but fear not because that is a very, very good thing indeed.
Peter Grant is still in training as a wizard in a very special police unit in London. The repercussions on his friends and colleagues from the first story are still being felt, and because his rather wonderful boss, Thomas Nightingale, is still recovering, Peter is left a little more to his own devices.
The story kicks off when he is called to view a body which seems to be giving off a faint whiff of music, specifically jazz, which is one of Peter’s specialities because his Dad was a well-known jazz musician who hasn’t played for a while because of drugs and other things. So we are off on a trail of musicians meeting violent ends after gigs, “jazz vampires”, horrible experiments and a faceless wizard of some power. Along the way we also finds out a little more of the background to wizards in England and a tiny bit more about what exactly happened at Etterberg during the war.
Silvery Dude and I talked about doing a read-a-long as we had both enjoyed the first novel so much but a combination of my reading slump and him taking the book on holiday with him meant that he read it first (curses) but was good enough not to spoil it, just looking on indulgently when I said how much I had enjoyed it. Which I did, of course.
I’m really looking forward to the third volume to see how the wee surprise at the end develops, and had hoped that it would be out later this year but Amazon seems to be indicating that the next tale won’t be published until next spring so I’m just going to have to wait.
Was never very good at that.
But this comes highly recommended, though better to have read Rivers first.
Well, lots of things have been happening chez Bride, including preparing for an interview and getting myself properly promoted into the job that I’ve been doing for just over a year. Massively exciting and not a little stressful which is why I haven’t been reading, blogging or commenting but hopefully things will settle down now that I’ve been successful, especially now that another big decision has been made, which is that the Book God will be retiring from the wonderful world of work in the early summer.
I don’t know about you guys but when I’m going through periods of change I find it difficult to settle to read. But I have a plan; I am hoping to carve out proper time for reading every day from now on and set myself sensible goals, even if it’s just “read 20 pages of x today”.
And all I need to kickstart myself is another book as good as Rivers of London.
I have to give thanks to Silvery Dude who bought this for me as a birthday present, for two reasons really (1) it’s a cracking story and (2) it was exactly the right thing for the two days on which I succumbed to my horrible cold and sulked in my tent until I felt better. So I read this in two sittings.
Peter Grant is a probationary police constable in central London who discovers he has some interesting talents (basically he can speak to the dead) when a strange crime is committed on Covent Garden. He comes to the attention of Inspector Nightingale (who just happens to be the last wizard in England) and a whole new world opens up to him.
This is a fabulous story; a quote on the cover suggests that this is what it would be like if Harry Potter grew up and joined the police and I can understand where that’s come from but this is remarkably inventive and enjoyable in a totally different way; for a start it’s considerably more violent than HP (bit not excessively so). It’s a serial killer novel with magic and mythology. And I loved it.
For a start, most of the action takes place in Covent Garden and The Strand, both of which are close to where I work, and it was great fun to imagine the rather strange plot unfolding in such familiar surroundings. And then there’s the whole mythology of the Thames, with the rivers in human form, which I thought worked wonderfully well.
I haven’t said much about the plot, but it’s a great story of the supernatural and mythological punching through to the real world (no pun intended…)
I loved it so much that I’ve pre-ordered the sequel, and it definitely took my mind off my unwellness. You should really, really get this.
I can announce quite happily that my reading slump is finally over, but what that means is that I now have a nice stack of reviews for both here and the Screen God blog that I need to catch up on (grammatically incorrect I’m sure but too hot to think of an alternative).
But I have an excuse (I think) and it’s not my normal gosh-I’ve-been-so-busy-at-work-poor-little-me nonsense. No, this backlog is all because of a hectic social life which has seen lunches and cocktails and catching up with friends before they go on holiday all having taken place since last Sunday. There won’t be another week like it until Christmas, mark my words.
I like excuses like that, it sounds like I know how to have a good time. Which I do, I just don’t get the chance to do it all at once. Anyhow, enough of all this nonsense.
First on the review pile is the latest Christopher Fowler, namely Bryant & May off the Rails. Now, it isn’t that long ago since I read and reviewed the previous book in the series (see here) and I normally don’t read sequences close together because I’m always afraid that I will somehow lose interest, but in this case I was really keen to get my hands on this because the events follow on almost immediately from the previous story and I wanted to know what happens.
And it doesn’t disappoint, building on what’s gone before, developing the character of the enigmatic Mr Fox, and throwing in loads of absolutely fascinating information about the London Underground. As before, not going to discuss the plot as I don’t want to spoil it for anyone but as always I really, really enjoyed this. Not terribly eloquent as a review, but that just shows what too many Cosmopolitans can do to a woman; although I’m not entirely convinced that there is such a thing as too many Cosmopolitans, but that may be a Scottish thing.
And behind the curve as always, I discover that I’m one of the last to know that Mr Fowler has his own blog which is really worth reading; you can find it here.
Bride of the Book God 