Murder as a Fine Art

Starred review from March 4, 2013
A killer copying the brutal 1811 Ratcliffe Highway murders terrorizes 1854 London in this brilliant crime thriller from Morrell (First Blood). The earlier slaughters, attributed to a John Williams, were the subject of a controversial essay by Thomas De Quincey entitled “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.” A man who considers himself an “artist of death” duplicates the first set of Williams’s killings by using a mallet and a knife to dispatch a shopkeeper, his wife, their two children (including an infant), and a servant. The similarities send the police after De Quincey, who, aided by his able daughter Emily, must vindicate himself and catch the killer. Morrell tosses in the political machinations of Lord Palmerston, then Home Secretary, who has been promoting revolution in Europe to assure Great Britain’s political dominance. Everything works—the horrifying depiction of the murders, the asides explaining the impact of train travel on English society, nail-biting action sequences—making this book an epitome of the intelligent page-turner. Agent: Jane Dystel, Dystel & Goderich Literary Management.

February 15, 2013
In 1854, a series of senseless killings in London so closely echo the literary work of Thomas De Quincey that he becomes the principal suspect. Writer Thomas De Quincey, best known for Confessions of an English Opium Eater, his frank memoir of his experiences with opium, also published a satirical essay entitled "On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts," in which he describes in appreciative detail the early-19th-century Ratcliffe Highway murders. While he's in London on a promotional tour, accompanied by his outspoken daughter, Emily, someone re-creates the Ratcliffe murders in a way that suggests the killer may be using De Quincey's piece as a blueprint. De Quincey falls under suspicion and must use his extensive knowledge of the nature of violence and regret, and his pre-Freudian theories of the subconscious, as well as his resourceful daughter and two policeman who believe in his innocence, to catch and stop the true killer, all while dealing with his crippling opium addiction. Meanwhile, the ongoing murder spree spreads increasing terror throughout London, putting the entire empire at risk. Morrell (First Blood, 1971, etc.) fills his work with extensive detail on life in London in 1854, usually in service to his story but sometimes in a gratuitous fashion. His De Quincey is quite convincing, but most of his other characters lack the same depth. Some sections are oddly and distractingly repetitive--for instance, the reader is given a detailed introduction at two different points in the novel to the real-life Dr. John Snow, who traced a cholera epidemic to a contaminated water source. In trying too hard to bring certain threads full circle, the book's climax comes across as a bit contrived. But the charming central conceit--a laudanum-chugging De Quincy chasing a killer through fog-shrouded Victorian London--goes a long way toward making up for the novel's glaring shortcomings, as do several tense, well-paced action sequences. Fans of Victorian and/or quirky mysteries will find much to enjoy and will likely be willing to forgive the book's substantial flaws.

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December 1, 2012

Morrell (The Naked Edge) is best known for his 1976 First Blood, which introduced Rambo to the world. Since then the author has written in a variety of action genres, including in comic books, and this fluency shows in this diverting period crime novel that's set in 1854 London. Three sleuths, including two detectives from the infant Scotland Yard and the infamous "Opium-Eater," Thomas De Quincey, hunt for a killer who has replicated a pair of 40-year-old massacres that De Quincey had praised in one of his essays. Thirteen people have already been brutally slaughtered. Now De Quincey is the prime suspect. VERDICT Morrell hooks the reader early and moves the action along swiftly. He also effectively captures a long-gone London and details how the city was changing as it moved into the industrial age. This diverting thriller will please the many readers who enjoy historical crime fiction.--David Keymer, Modesto, CA

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 1, 2013
At the start of this exceptional historical mystery, an artist of death prepares himself for his greatest creationthe gruesome slaughter of a young shop owner and his family. In 1854, East Londoners hadn't seen such horrific murders since 1851, when John Williams also killed a shopkeeper and his family in a nearby neighborhood. The new crime finds Detective Inspector Shawn Ryan at the grisly, chaotic crime scene, where evidence is trampled as the killer blithely escapes. Visiting London at the time, for reasons he can't fully understand, is Thomas De Quincey, scandalous opium eater and author of the 1827 satirical essay, On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts, and two newer essays in which he lauds various horrific details of the Williams killings as sublime art. DI Ryan initially treats the drug-riddled, elderly writer as a suspect but eventually accepts his help, if grudgingly. Military-thriller writer Morrell switches genres here in a riveting novel packed with edifying historical minutiae seamlessly inserted into a story narrated in part by De Quincey's daughter and partly in revealing, dialogue-rich prose. The page-flipping action, taut atmosphere, and multifaceted characters will remind readers of D. E. Meredith's Hatton and Roumonde mysteries and Kenneth Cameron's The Frightened Man (2009). Sure to be a hit with the gaslight crowd.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)