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.

March 15, 2016
Jack the Ripper meets his psychopathic equal in this macabre tale of late Victorian England. Although Nevil Hammersmith, late of Scotland Yard, has the credentials to run his own detective agency, his only goal is to find Inspector Walter Day, his best friend and former colleague from the Yard. Day has been missing for almost a year, and his wife, Claire, is putting up the money for Hammersmith Discreet Enquiries, which, if not for employee Hatty Pitt, would be a one-case agency. She takes the initiative with the missing manager of the grandly refurbished and reopened Plumm's Emporium, while her boss remains focused on Day. Despite all his searching, Hammersmith doesn't know that practically under his nose, Day is wandering around in a dazed and amnesiac condition after months of captivity and mistreatment by a man he calls Jack. His jailer, who just released him, is better known as Jack the Ripper and has mesmerized Day into forgetting his wife and children and avoiding the police. Jack himself has eluded the members of a secret society that held him captive and tortured him in retribution for the pain he caused others. Now he's killing the members one by one, and one of the few survivors, Claire's father, hires a mysterious couple, known only as Mr. and Mrs. Parker, to kill Jack before he murders the entire society. Mrs. Parker is a particularly good choice for the job; her husband has to keep her in shackles at night so she won't kill him just for the love of it. As pursuers and quarry converge on opulent Plumm's, Jack is still one step ahead, with a secret weapon that only Walter Day can anticipate. Grecian (The Harvest Man, 2015, etc.) spares no gruesome detail in this fifth installment about the hunt for England's most famous serial killer. If you're up for one more tale about him and you can stand the gore, you're in for quite a ride.

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April 1, 2016

In this fifth entry in Grecian's historical series (after The Harvest Man), Insp. Walter Day has been Jack the Ripper's prisoner for a year. Nevil Hammersmith is still determined to find Day, but even his optimism is beginning to flag. Plus, his newly minted detective agency isn't bringing in much money. Claire Day, who insists that her husband is alive, faints when she spots him in a crowded department store. Yes, Day has apparently escaped but is suffering from amnesia and has been living on the street. Or, has he actually been doing Jack's bidding all this time, without knowing it? As if one serial killer isn't enough, a husband-and-wife team of assassins appear on the scene to complicate matters for our heroes. VERDICT Grecian does not waste time moving the action along, although the lengthy epigraphs before each section are distracting. The gritty descriptions of Victorian London are a major highlight of the series, making this a solid choice for fans of the time period. [See Prepub Alert, 11/15/15.]--Laurel Bliss, San Diego State Univ. Lib.

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