Resurrectionist

October 1, 2012
Why would an escapee from Bedlam need an endless supply of fresh cadavers? Reverend Tombs makes it his habit to visit Col. Titus Hyde during his incarceration for melancholia in Britain's notorious madhouse, Bedlam. The two men reminisce about army service over a chessboard until one midnight finds one of the two lying in the cell while the other strides off to freedom. The chief magistrate calls in Matthew Hawkwood, a Regency supersleuth employed as a Bow Street Runner, and asks him to investigate very quietly so as not to alarm the citizenry. The matter seems to resolve itself when the perp shouts his confession just before setting fire to a church and leaping into the flames. But that hardly accounts for all the bodies that are now turning up with their faces peeled away, peculiar amputations and patches of skin removed. Could this homicidal anatomist somehow be the man who murdered and mutilated the Bedlam victim, stole his identity and is now keeping body snatchers like the evil Sawney busy? Hyde, an experienced army surgeon, could be responsible, but tracking him won't be easy for Hawkwood, who will have to fend off cutthroat attacks, rapier thrusts, scruffy whores, fetid grog, and the offal in London's streets and sewers before finding a secret operating theater where two surgeons--one in pursuit of scientific knowledge and the other for more personal reasons--are transplanting organs into deceased bodies and trying to revive them with electrical shocks. Part fiction, part fact and all unsuitable for the faint of heart. McGee (Hawkwood, 2012) provides so many scurrilous grave robbers and medical atrocities that gentle readers may want to keep a perfumed hankie handy.

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November 1, 2012
An ingenious escape by a Bedlam lunatic at the start of this fast-paced thriller thrusts readers and Bow Street Runner Matthew Hawkwood instantly into a nightmarish psychological puzzler featuring a nefarious villain. The extent of his villainy, his background, and his identity are only gradually revealed, heightening the suspense as the madman (or mastermind) dramatically evades capture time and again while pursuing his own Frankensteinian goal of truly grisly proportion. Set in a sullen, befogged London well known to Dickens fans and rife with witty character names like grave robbers Sawney and Magget and their helpers the Ragg boys, the book's chase aptly begins with two grim graveyard discoveries. Hawkwood's tenacity in pursuit reveals his implacable character as corpses disappear from graves, seemingly random murder victims minus body parts are discovered, and shady citizens vanish or die. Not for the weak-stomached, this dark tale is well suited to chilly winter nights: as gripping and gruesome as Preston and Child's The Cabinet of Curiosities (2002), with the black humor and sinister atmosphere of the Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn historical mysteries by Will Thomas.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

Starred review from October 1, 2012
Two bizarre murders preoccupy the charismatic Matthew Hawkwood, a former army officer turned London Bow Street Runner, in McGee’s stellar second Regency crime thriller (after Hawkwood). Chief magistrate James Read orders Hawkwood to go to Cripplegate Churchyard, where a man’s corpse has been nailed by the wrists to a tree trunk “in a crude parody of the crucifixion.” Later, in the notorious Bethlem Hospital known as Bedlam, a body with its face removed turns up in the cell of a resident, Colonel Hyde. But is the body Hyde’s? Hawkwood quickly ascertains that things aren’t quite what they seem, and his pursuit of the solution to both murders plunges him into the body-snatching underworld. The surprises keep coming as the pages fly by. Besides perfectly mixing action and detection, McGee convincingly evokes early 19th-century London and the world of the Bow Street Runners. Agent: Jennifer Weltz, Jean V. Naggar Literary.