Mayhem by Sarah Pinborough
Aug. 19th, 2013 12:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
When a rotting torso is discovered in the vault of New Scotland Yard, it doesn’t take Dr Thomas Bond, Police Surgeon, long to realise that there is a second killer at work in the city where, only a few days before, Jack the Ripper brutally murdered two women in one night. But this is the hand of a colder killer, one who lacks Jack’s emotion.
Dr Bond, plagued by insomnia and an unshakeable sense of foreboding, has begun to spend his sleepless nights in a drug-induced haze in the opium dens down by the docks. He’s not the only man who looks like he doesn’t belong there. There is a stranger, a man in a long black coat, who spends his nights studying the addicts as they dream.
More headless and limbless torsos find their way into the Thames, and as Dr Bond becomes obsessed with finding the killer, he begins to suspect the stranger might be the key. As his investigations lead him into an unholy alliance, he starts to wonder: has a man brought mayhem to the streets of London, or a monster?
It’s 1887 and London’s in the grip of Jack the Ripper’s reign of terror when a number of headless and limbless torsos are found in the Thames. Police surgeon Andrew Bond suspects the work of another serial killer but with police resources focused on Jack, little progress is made on identifying these new victims, let alone the perpetrator.
Unable to shake a terrible sense of foreboding and unable to sleep, Bond takes to London’s opium dens in search of oblivion. Instead he finds a mysterious priest who studies those under the drug’s influence and who believes that the killer has supernatural origins. With the help of this nameless priest and Aaron Kosminski, a Russian émigré haunted by strange visions, Bond’s investigations will put him on the trail of a monster bringing mayhem to London’s streets …
Sarah Pinborough’s novel, the first in a new horror series, draws on the real life case of the Thames Torso and people from the time and mixes it with east European mythology. As a fan of Pinborough’s other work and having an interest in Ripperology, I was keen to read it but while Pinborough has a great feel for period and Bond is a complex character – a drug addict in denial with an almost sixth sense about the crimes – the plot never quite gelled for me and the alternating viewpoints (the narration’s predominantly divided between Bond, Kosminski, Inspector Moore (the detective assigned to the case) and James Harrington (a young man travelling across Europe in search of adventure) meant that I never really felt connected to any of them. At the same time, the ending was too drawn out for me, which led to an anti-climactic finale. As such, although this is an okay read, it never really sprung to life for me and while I’ll check out Pinborough’s other work, I’m not sure I’ll continue with this series.
The Kosminski sections were for me the most successful with Pinborough doing a great job of filling in his personal life and family history. His struggles with the horror of his gift give the book an emotional punch that it otherwise lacked. By contrast, the monster reveal left me underwhelmed and I wished there’d been more information on how it worked and what it wanted.
I remain a fan of Pinborough’s work but I’m not sure whether this series is really going to for me.
The Verdict:
Sarah Pinborough’s novel, the first in a new horror series, draws on the real life case of the Thames Torso and people from the time and mixes it with east European mythology. As a fan of Pinborough’s other work and having an interest in Ripperology, I was keen to read it but while Pinborough has a great feel for period and Bond is a complex character – a drug addict in denial with an almost sixth sense about the crimes – the plot never quite gelled for me and the alternating viewpoints (the narration’s predominantly divided between Bond, Kosminski, Inspector Moore (the detective assigned to the case) and James Harrington (a young man travelling across Europe in search of adventure) meant that I never really felt connected to any of them. At the same time, the ending was too drawn out for me, which led to an anti-climactic finale. As such, although this is an okay read, it never really sprung to life for me and while I’ll check out Pinborough’s other work, I’m not sure I’ll continue with this series.
When a rotting torso is discovered in the vault of New Scotland Yard, it doesn’t take Dr Thomas Bond, Police Surgeon, long to realise that there is a second killer at work in the city where, only a few days before, Jack the Ripper brutally murdered two women in one night. But this is the hand of a colder killer, one who lacks Jack’s emotion.
Dr Bond, plagued by insomnia and an unshakeable sense of foreboding, has begun to spend his sleepless nights in a drug-induced haze in the opium dens down by the docks. He’s not the only man who looks like he doesn’t belong there. There is a stranger, a man in a long black coat, who spends his nights studying the addicts as they dream.
More headless and limbless torsos find their way into the Thames, and as Dr Bond becomes obsessed with finding the killer, he begins to suspect the stranger might be the key. As his investigations lead him into an unholy alliance, he starts to wonder: has a man brought mayhem to the streets of London, or a monster?
It’s 1887 and London’s in the grip of Jack the Ripper’s reign of terror when a number of headless and limbless torsos are found in the Thames. Police surgeon Andrew Bond suspects the work of another serial killer but with police resources focused on Jack, little progress is made on identifying these new victims, let alone the perpetrator.
Unable to shake a terrible sense of foreboding and unable to sleep, Bond takes to London’s opium dens in search of oblivion. Instead he finds a mysterious priest who studies those under the drug’s influence and who believes that the killer has supernatural origins. With the help of this nameless priest and Aaron Kosminski, a Russian émigré haunted by strange visions, Bond’s investigations will put him on the trail of a monster bringing mayhem to London’s streets …
Sarah Pinborough’s novel, the first in a new horror series, draws on the real life case of the Thames Torso and people from the time and mixes it with east European mythology. As a fan of Pinborough’s other work and having an interest in Ripperology, I was keen to read it but while Pinborough has a great feel for period and Bond is a complex character – a drug addict in denial with an almost sixth sense about the crimes – the plot never quite gelled for me and the alternating viewpoints (the narration’s predominantly divided between Bond, Kosminski, Inspector Moore (the detective assigned to the case) and James Harrington (a young man travelling across Europe in search of adventure) meant that I never really felt connected to any of them. At the same time, the ending was too drawn out for me, which led to an anti-climactic finale. As such, although this is an okay read, it never really sprung to life for me and while I’ll check out Pinborough’s other work, I’m not sure I’ll continue with this series.
The Kosminski sections were for me the most successful with Pinborough doing a great job of filling in his personal life and family history. His struggles with the horror of his gift give the book an emotional punch that it otherwise lacked. By contrast, the monster reveal left me underwhelmed and I wished there’d been more information on how it worked and what it wanted.
I remain a fan of Pinborough’s work but I’m not sure whether this series is really going to for me.
The Verdict:
Sarah Pinborough’s novel, the first in a new horror series, draws on the real life case of the Thames Torso and people from the time and mixes it with east European mythology. As a fan of Pinborough’s other work and having an interest in Ripperology, I was keen to read it but while Pinborough has a great feel for period and Bond is a complex character – a drug addict in denial with an almost sixth sense about the crimes – the plot never quite gelled for me and the alternating viewpoints (the narration’s predominantly divided between Bond, Kosminski, Inspector Moore (the detective assigned to the case) and James Harrington (a young man travelling across Europe in search of adventure) meant that I never really felt connected to any of them. At the same time, the ending was too drawn out for me, which led to an anti-climactic finale. As such, although this is an okay read, it never really sprung to life for me and while I’ll check out Pinborough’s other work, I’m not sure I’ll continue with this series.
