Lost and Gone Forever

March 21, 2016
Grecian’s mediocre fifth late-Victorian novel featuring Scotland Yard’s Insp. Walter Day picks up a year after the events of 2015’s The Harvest Man, which ended with Day’s abduction by none other than Jack the Ripper. The Ripper, who remains unidentified, is on a mission of revenge after escaping from the Karstphanomen, a society of prominent men, whose members caught him asleep over the corpse of a prostitute and then confined and tortured him. The Ripper is also playing mind games with Day, allowing him his freedom after the policeman no longer remembers who he is. Day struggles to stay alive on the streets of London, while his close friend and former colleague, Nevil Hammersmith, has opened a private enquiry agency whose sole goal is to find him. The convoluted plot isn’t enhanced by some pompous prose (“He might be the last man on Earth, standing there in front of the Yard, surrounded by layers of nothingness”). Agent: Seth Fishman, Gernert Company.