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Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Victorian London is a cesspool of crime, and Scotland Yard has only twelve detectives--known as "The Murder Squad"--to investigate countless murders every month. Created after the Metropolitan Police's spectacular failure to capture Jack the Ripper, The Murder Squad suffers rampant public contempt. They have failed their citizens. But no one can anticipate the brutal murder of one of their own . . . one of the twelve . . .
When Walter Day, the squad's newest hire, is assigned the case of the murdered detective, he finds a strange ally in the Yard's first forensic pathologist, Dr. Bernard Kingsley. Together they track the killer, who clearly is not finished with The Murder Squad . . . but why?
Filled with fascinating period detail, and real historical figures, this spectacular debut in a new series showcases the depravity of late Victorian London, the advent of criminology, and introduces a stunning new cast of characters sure to appeal to fans of The Sherlockian and The Alienist.
Author Notes
Alex Grecian is the author of the long-running and critically acclaimed graphic novel series Proof. He lives in the Midwest with his wife and son. The Yard is his first novel.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
To hunt for anachronisms in historical fiction is a churlish hobby, but there's a telling one in Alex Grecian's affable first novel, a Victorian thriller. A detective describing his sense of responsibility to the families of murder victims employs a 1990s buzzword that it's exceedingly unlikely would have entered the mind, much less the mouth, of a man in 1889: "closure." The Yard has a great many virtues, including a Dickensian profusion of memorable minor characters, but this misstep lays bare its most serious flaw. Its heroes get shallower, not deeper, until by the book's conclusion they seem like moralizing contemporary stick figures, freed from the complexity of their time. What feels like a third of the novel is devoted to their good deeds and subsequent mutual congratulation. In this mist of bonhomous closure, the suspense of a thriller fades. At the start, police in Euston Station discover a trunk stuffed with the corpse of a Scotland Yard inspector. In the course of a few mostly sleepless days, three men-Walter Day, a newly promoted member of the Yard's "Murder Squad"; Nevil Hammersmith, a shrewd street officer; and Bernard Kingsley, an eccentric physician with an interest in the emerging science of forensics-circle a net around the murderer. The Yard also pays welcome stylistic homage to the rambling Victorian triple-decker, with plots and characters spiraling out in every direction from its initial crime scene. Among others there are a pair of prostitutes haunted by memories of Jack the Ripper, a new police commissioner, an amiably violent thief named Blackleg-and, in absorbing occasional glimpses, the murderer, a madman trying to recreate his lost family. It's this sense of madness that is the book's greatest strength. Grecian places the action of his story directly in the shadow of the Ripper murders, and sketches, intriguingly, how those crimes have forced the police to accept that murder can have darkly psychological motives. Grecian has a fine, flexible, curious voice, and The Yard looks as if it could be the start of a promising series; indeed, the enterprising Blackleg on his own could profitably drive a sequel, and the rise of forensics is a fascinating subject. And then, Grecian's error is a common one. Even great authors working in the genre, such as David Mitchell and Patrick O'Brian, have given their characters an unrealistically modern broadness of mind. After all, the past is a brutish place, and what a real Walter Day would have believed in his heart-about sex, class, race-would likely alienate us immediately. The solution most writers have found, alas, is perhaps the most serious deficiency historical fiction has: a palliating dishonesty about what went on in the heads of people in other times. To his credit, Grecian lends great realism to his secondary characters; he may just be too fond of his primary ones to permit them their true context. Agent: Seth Fishman, the Gernert Company. (June) Charles Finch is the author of A Death in the Small Hours, which Minotaur will publish in November. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
In his debut novel, Grecian powerfully evokes both the physical, smog-ridden atmosphere of London in 1889 and its emotional analogs of anxiety and depression. It's the year after Jack the Ripper has apparently stopped his depredations. Among the Ripper's victims were the London police, especially the 12-member Murder Squad, which endured ridicule from both Saucy Jack and the public for its bumbling failure to solve the case. But the squad is still at work investigating homicides as Grecian's tale begins. Mixing fact and fiction (the Murder Squad did exist), Grecian has one of the squad's own, Detective Christian Little, discovered rolled up in a steamer trunk in London's Euston Station, his eyes and mouth sewn shut. The newest (fictional) member of the squad, Detective Inspector Walter Day, is assigned to investigate, aided by the first forensic pathologist in Britain, Dr. Bernard Kingsley (based on Dr. Bernard Spilsbury). More murder, both of police and of a chimney sweep, and more outrage follow. Grecian's infusion of actual history adds to this thriller's credibility and punch. A deeply satisfying reconstruction of post-Ripper London.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Consider THE YARD (Putnam, $26.95) a crude corrective to those literary leanings. This deliciously trashy first novel by Alex Grecian walks the genre back to the era of Jack the Ripper with its bloody tale of a serial killer who is systematically butchering detectives from Scotland Yard's recently formed Murder Squad. "Jack was the first of a new breed," Sir Edward Bradford, the police commissioner who created this elite division, remarks. "He opened a door to certain deranged possibilities and there will be more like him." Two upstanding if rather dull police officers take the lead on the case, but you're better off watching Dr. Bernard Kingsley, the pioneering forensic pathologist who cleans up the primitive procedures at the London morgue and does clever things with the promising new science of "finger marks." Grecian has a talent for capturing gory details, and his revolting rendering of one of Dr. Kingsley's autopsies is outdone only by his extremely vivid (and strangely moving) account of a murder. Given this natural aptitude, it doesn't seem to matter so much that the author introduces historical references awkwardly or that his use of the period vernacular is untrustworthy. Bounding from the workhouse to the lunatic asylum to the stinking streets, he does outstanding descriptive work on the mad and the maimed, the diseased and the demented. Children receive his special attention. There are cameo appearances by a little match girl, dead of phosphorous poisoning, and a small boy trapped in the chimney of a rich man's town house, as well as a more comprehensive account of the suffering of one poor child who survives the horrific experience of being "adopted" by a murderer. If Charles Dickens isn't somewhere clapping his hands for this one, Wilkie Collins surely is. There's nothing like an old building with yellowed newspapers taped to the windows to stir a child's imagination. Nine-year-old Jess Hall, one of the narrators of Wiley Cash's mesmerizing first novel, A LAND MORE KIND THAN HOME (Morrow/HarperCollins, $24.99), gets up the nerve to spy on the religious services held behind those papered-up windows - and he'll regret it the rest of his life. It takes two more storytellers to fill in the narrative about the River Road Church of Christ in Signs Following and its charismatic pastor, Carson Chambliss, a man so evil he scarcely seems human. Adelaide Lyle, the elderly midwife in this Appalachian town, comes forward to reveal the truth about how Miss Molly Jameson died. ("The snake bites bothered me the most," Miss Adelaide recalls of her churchgoing days.) The third narrator, Sheriff Clem Barefield, is aware of how Pastor Chambliss got those terrible burns all over his body. But only Jess knows why his autistic older brother died on the very day he was taken into the church, and it's his voice that we carry away from this intensely felt and beautifully told story. Sheriff Walt Longmire, the Wyoming lawman who keeps the peace in Craig Johnson's broad-shouldered Western mysteries, is scouting scenic locations in the Northern Cheyenne nation for his daughter's wedding in AS THE CROW FLIES (Viking, $25.95) when he sees a woman plunging off the face of Painted Warrior cliff with an infant in her arms. Although he's way out of his jurisdiction and in the doghouse with his daughter, Walt agrees to take time to mentor Lolo Long, the new tribal police chief, on what turns out to be a case of murder. Walt continues to be excellent company because he's always keen to learn something from the strong Indian characters in this series, starting with his friend, Henry Standing Bear, whom we have come to know and respect as "the thing that scared the things in the dark." This time a wizened old medicine woman takes Walt in hand, guiding him through a Native American Church peyote ceremony deep in the woods. 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Kirkus Review
It's 1889, the year after Jack the Ripper terrorized the East End, but London is still awash with murders--96 bodies have been retrieved from the Thames in one month, most with their throats slit--and the detectives of Scotland Yard demonstrate their usual mixture of savvy and incompetence. The first victim the Yard has to contend with is Christian Little, whose mutilated body is found inside a trunk at Euston Square Station, a murder not just horrifying, but also embarrassing because Little is a detective inspector at Scotland Yard. Put in charge of the case is Walter Day, recently brought in from Devon and hence innocent of the previous year's failures. In fact, the Yard's new Murder Squad, an elite group of detectives of which Little had been a member, had been assembled in response to the failure of the Metropolitan Police to catch "Saucy Jack." Assisting Day is Dr. Bernard Kingsley, a surgeon at University College Hospital and incipient forensic pathologist. Heading the Murder Squad is Col. Sir Edward Bradford, a gruff no-nonsense administrator with good instincts about the competence of police officers. Grecian creates a large and eccentric cast of characters, including a detective inspector who can't stop making jokes (usually bad puns), a mentally disturbed dancing man, a brutal tailor (whose telltale shears are used in untoward ways), the seductive wife of a doctor, and two coldblooded prostitutes, now perpetrators of crime rather than victims. But the murderer keeps making fools of the Murder Squad by bumping off more detectives. Although the whodunit aspect of the novel is a bit weak, Grecian successfully re-creates the dark atmosphere of late Victorian London.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
In this mystery set in post-Jack the Ripper London, Scotland Yard must solve the murder of one of its own detectives, who is found dead with his eyes and mouth sewn shut. The largely male cast of characters is portrayed sympathetically-perhaps too much so to be entirely believable-but listeners will root for the modest Inspector Day, who earns promotion after marrying above his social class (among other things, the shame of having to eat mock instead of real turtle fuels his determination to succeed). Likewise, the haunted Dr. Kingsley will rouse interest, as the emerging art of forensic science is revealed through his investigations. Subplots proliferate, and gritty details abound, including in one harrowing murder scene told from the victim's perspective. Narrator Toby Leonard Moore subtly voices the characters, matching accent and tone with social class and disposition but never overdoing the performance. VERDICT Recommended for most public libraries. ["An excellent murder mystery, with characters that deserve a series, or at least a sequel. Fans of Sherlock Holmes or Jack the Ripper tales should enjoy this mystery," read the review of the New York Times best--selling Putnam hc, LJ 4/15/12.-Ed.]--Victoria Caplinger, NoveList, Durham, NC (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Prologue LONDON, 1889. Nobody noticed when Inspector Christian Little of Scotland Yard disappeared, and nobody was looking for him when he was found. A black steamer trunk appeared at Euston Square Station some time during the night and remained unnoticed until early afternoon of the following day. The porter discovered it after the one o'clock train had departed, and he opened the trunk when it proved too heavy for him to lift. He immediately sent a boy to find the police. Detective Inspector Walter Day was first at the scene, and he directed the many bobbies who arrived after him. He had come to London only the week before. This was his first crime scene and he was clearly nervous, but the blue-uniformed bobbies knew their job well and did not require much from him. They pushed back the commuters who had gathered round the trunk and began to scour the station for possible weapons and other clues. An hour later, Dr Bernard Kingsley entered the station all in a rush and headed for the knot of people gathered on the gallery of the booking office. The trunk had been left against the railing overlooking the platform. Kingsley brushed past Inspector Day and knelt on the floor. He opened his satchel and drew out a cloth tape measure, snaked it between his fingers, moving it up and across. The trunk was a standard size, two by three by three, glossy black with tin rivets along the seams. He closed the lid and brushed a finger across the top. It was clean; no dust. With his magnifying glass in hand, he scuttled around the trunk, scru tinizing the corners for wear. He licked his finger and rubbed a seam along one side where black paint had been applied to cover a crack. He was aware of Day hovering over his shoulder and, less intrusive, the bobbies at the station's entrance pushing back fresh onlookers who had arrived from the street outside. The lower classes were always out for a spectacle, while the better-off walked briskly past, ignoring the to-do. His preliminary examination out of the way, Kingsley opened and shut the trunk's lid several times, listening to the hinges, then eased it back until the edge of the lid rested against the floor. He peered into the trunk for a long moment, ignoring the sickly sweet odor of death. The body inside was folded in on itself, knotted and mashed into the too-small space like so much laundry. One shoe was missing, and Kingsley presumed it was some where at the bottom of the trunk, under the body. The man's suit was gabardine, the hems lightly worn, dirt pressed into the creases. His arms and legs were broken and wrapped around one another. Kingsley took a pair of tongs from his satchel and used them to move an arm out of the way so he could see the man's face. The skin was pearl grey and the eyes and mouth were sewn shut with heavy thread, the pattern of parallel stitches like train tracks across the man's lips. Kingsley looked up at Day. When he spoke, his voice was low and measured. "Have you identified him yet?" Day shook his head no. "It's one of you," Kingsley said. "One of me?" "The body is that of a detective. This is Inspector Little." Day backed away to the railing and held up his hands, warding off the unpleasant thought. "It can't be. I spoke with Little just last evening." Kingsley shrugged. "It's not that I doubt you," Day said. "But Inspector Little . . ." "Come and see for yourself," Kingsley said. Day stared at him. "I said come here. Please." "Of course." Day approached the trunk and swallowed hard before looking down. "Breathe through your mouth, Mr Day. The odor isn't pleasant." Day nodded, panting heavily. "I suppose it is Mr Little. But what have they done to him?" "You can see what's been done. The question is why has it been done?" "It's inhuman." "I'm afraid it's all too human." "Cut those off him. Get that off his face. We can't have a detective of the Yard trussed up like a . . . like a Christmas goose, for God's sake." One of the uniformed constables standing at the rail looked up. The station was full of citizens who didn't care about the dead detective in the trunk just so long as they got a chance to see him. Day recognized the ter ror in the constable's eyes and could see that he had no idea why he was doing this dangerous job for little money and no respect. In that single moment, in the expression he saw in the other man's eyes, Day understood that London needed her police, but did not care about them. And he saw, too, that this newfound discovery was something that every policeman on that platform already understood. The morale of the Metropolitan Police Force had reached its lowest point during the Ripper murders of the previous year and had not yet re covered. The files of the Whitechapel murders had not been closed as the case was still ongoing, but nobody in London trusted the police to do their job. Jack had escaped and the detectives of the Yard had never even come close to finding him. The unsolved case was a harsh reminder of their fallibility, and it hung over their heads every morning when they walked through the door of the back hall. The Ripper was still out there somewhere, and it was likely he'd remain out there. Kingsley stood and put a hand on Day's shoulder. When he spoke, his voice was barely audible. "I will most assuredly make Inspector Little presentable again. There will be a time and a place to mourn him. Here and now, you must fix your mind on justice. It is not outside the realm of possibility that Little's killer is watching us, and your demeanor may set the course for the investigation to come. You must appear to be strong and rational." Day nodded. "To work, then," Kingsley said. He grabbed a handle and lifted one end of the trunk, grunted, and set it back down. "Inspector Day," he said, "you look like an able fellow. Lift this end, would you?" "Where shall I put it?" "Not the entirety of the trunk, just pull upward on the handle and get this thing off the ground a bit, would you?" Kingsley removed his hat and set it on a bench along the far wall of the gallery. He draped his coat over the arm of the bench and strode back to where Day had an end of the trunk lifted off the ground. The two men were a study in contrasts. Dr Kingsley was short and thin with sharply chiseled features and wild, prematurely grey hair that matched his eyes. Inspector Day was tall and built like an ox through the chest and shoulders. His short dark hair was combed back from his wide forehead, and his expression was permanently helpful, as if he were in search of an old lady he might escort across the street. He displayed the easy physical confidence that some big men had, but his features were fine and sensitive and his eyes were sad. Kingsley found it impossible to dislike the young detective. "Higher, would you?" Kingsley said. "That's better." He got down on his hands and knees and crawled under the end of the trunk, Day straining above him. It didn't occur to him that Day might drop the trunk on his head. Men like Day used their brains to move their mus cles about. Their muscles were useful enough. Kingsley inspected the planks of the platform floor, peering into crevices in the ancient wood, worn smooth by the shoes of countless travelers. "Aha!" he said. He scrambled backward until his head was clear of the bottom of the trunk and stood up, using one hand to smooth his waistcoat over his stomach. The thumb and index finger of his other hand were pinched together, and he held them up to the light. Day squinted. "It's a hair," he said. "No, lad. It's a thread. This end is frayed a bit where it's been cut. Here, you see?" "The same thread used to sew his mouth and eyes?" "Different color. That was black. This is dark blue. It could be a coinci dence, someone lost a thread from her coat, perhaps, but I don't think so. I think your killer came prepared with at least two colors of thread. And why would that be?" He abruptly dropped to the ground and began to crawl around the plat form, his magnifying glass playing over the surface, his long fingers poking into the corners where the wall joined the planks of the floor. After several long minutes in which the onlookers behind the railing began to grow restless, Kingsley murmured an exclamation and held his finger up to the light. A drop of blood formed on his fingertip, and Kingsley smiled. He sucked the blood from his finger and turned his magnifying glass around, using the blunt handle to scrape dirt away from the wall. He stood and trotted back to where Day was still holding up an end of the trunk. Kingsley held out his hand, displaying his find for Day to see. "Needles," Day said. Kingsley grinned. "Three needles, Inspector Day. Three, where one might do. I'd say our killer's made a telling mistake. Give me your hand kerchief." "Is it in my breast pocket?" "I don't see one there." "I may have come out without it today." Kingsley nodded and turned to the nearest constable. "You there, have you a handkerchief ?" A tall, lanky constable looked up from the side of the platform where he seemed to be scanning the crowd. His eyes were bright and intelligent and nearly hidden behind long feminine lashes. He jumped slightly at the sound of Kingsley's voice. "What's your name?" Kingsley said. "Hammersmith, sir." "You sound Welsh, sir." "Yes, sir." "You're watching the crowd?" "What the detective said, about it being another detective in the box, it surprised people." "You were looking to see who among that crowd wasn't surprised. Who might have already known there was a detective in the trunk." "Yes, sir." "And?" "I didn't see anything unexpected." Kingsley nodded. "Still," he said, "it was a worthy idea. How long have you been with the force?" "Two years, sir." "I'm surprised I haven't made your acquaintance before this. I shall watch your career with interest. Now, I wonder if I might borrow your handkerchief?" "Of course, sir." "Thank you, Mr Hammersmith." Kingsley took the offered kerchief and glanced at it. He looked up at the constable. "This is not particularly clean." "I apologize, sir. I've been at it now for two shifts and haven't had a chance to launder anything." Indeed, Hammersmith looked sloppy. His blue uniform was wrinkled, his shirt was untucked on one side, and the cuffs of his trousers were muddy. There was a hangdog air about him, but in his body language and bearing he somehow gave the impression of utter competence. "Yes, well, thank you, Hammersmith. I shall return this as soon as I possibly can." "Of course, sir." Kingsley wrapped the needles in the soiled square of cloth. He tucked the handkerchief and the short piece of blue thread into his vest pocket to be examined later. "This one is a challenge. A real challenge." Kingsley smiled and scanned the platform one last time, barely taking in the crowd of onlookers. "Wonderful," he said. "Simply wonderful. You can let that down now." Day eased the end of the heavy trunk back to the platform floor and breathed a sigh of relief. "Have two of the men bring that round to the college," Kingsley said. "I'll want to examine Little's body, but I'm not going to do it here. Have the rest of these bobbies search the platform carefully for a man's left shoe. I suspect it's in the trunk, but there's no harm in putting them to work." Kingsley shrugged back into his coat, picked up his hat, and walked away. Halfway to the far edge of the platform, he turned and walked back to where Day still stood. He leaned in and whispered so the onlookers wouldn't overhear. "Shut the lid on that trunk," he said. "We don't want that rabble ogling a dead detective." Excerpted from The Yard by Alex Grecian All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
