The Yard
Summary: 1890, London. Jack the Ripper’s reign of terror is finally over, but a new one is just beginning…
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 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? from http://alexgrecian.com/books/about-the-yard-by-alex-grecian/
Group Reviews/Comments:
9 thumbs up
6 thumbs down
Those who liked the book mentions how the setting and time rang true for them. There were realistic connections made to the time of Jack the Ripper.
The novel included a theme of the beginning of forensics and many found that interesting.
Thumbs up people also mentioned it was a nice, easy, summertime read that took you somewhere else. It was light and amusing.
The pace was slow at the start, but picked up towards the end and became more exciting. The ambience (foggy London) and historical details made this a fun read.
The thumbs down crowd couldn’t be much different!
All agreed the writing had “issues”. There were too many characters, flat descriptions and the novel was longer than it should have been. There was no real mystery or puzzle to solve–the bad guy just kept doing the wrong thing. Everything just “magically” happened. The villian actually kept throwing himself at the police!
There were readers who said that the book tried to be a proto-procedural but fell short.
The writing was too obvious; did the author think the readers stupid? One was constantly “banged over the head” with the writing.
The side stories were pointless, the characters seemed stock, the pacing slow, and needlessly gruesome.
While I agree that in this first book of the series many of the characters and side plots seem pointless, I feel compelled to add that the books that follow flesh out many of the character’s stories. One such character is Nevil Hammersmith. In “The Black Country” (#2) we see the characters transported to a town much like the one Hammersmith grew up in, which allows the reader to connect with him on a much deeper level. I would say that with this series you have to be ready for the long haul. You have to be able to commit to learning about the characters the same way you learn about real people: gradually. I liked that Alex Grecian didn’t lay out characters’ personalities like reading an online biography, we learn about their character by reading about the way they interact with others and the way they handle adversity.
As someone who enjoys historical mysteries immensely, it really means something when I say that I have never felt so transported to the setting of post-Jack the Ripper London as I did in this book. The gritty realness could be somewhat disturbing at times, but that only added to the atmosphere of fear and distrust that I imagine laid over the city like the fog it is famous for. It made me simultaneously yearn for the bygone time of buggies and massive dresses and thankful that I live in the age of supermarkets and the internet.
As for the overall mystery, I appreciate the reality of the investigative techniques of the time. Like some people in the group review said, it was mostly by luck that Walter Day was able to catch the Bald Headed Man. Many people don’t realize that, even today, more crimes are solved because the perpetrator made mistakes during the crime and after than those solved by miraculous leaps of investigative brilliance. There is no such thing as a criminal mastermind, all people make mistakes and act irrationally when they feel threatened. The dogged determination of all those involved solved this case, they had to be patient and wait for the killer to slip-up, which he was bound to do considering the relentless pressure Day, Hammersmith, and Dr. Kinglsey were putting on him.
To conclude, I loved this book. I loved the whole series, really. I haven’t read any other books from Alex Grecian, and this is an oversight I plan to rectify immediately.