Formerly a locus of medical science, Edinburgh held one of
the world’s leading positions in the area of biology and human anatomy in the
early 19th century. The city one of the
first to lift legal restrictions on the usage of corpses for research, arriving
at that point was not without a little drama, however. A couple of enterprising men had moved beyond
grave robbing into actively creating their own ‘research material’ in order to earn
a few crowns. Some of the guests at their
communal house coming down with strange illnesses, disappearing, or outright
dying, they made relatively profitable trade before authorities latched on and
put an end to their ‘business venture’.
Set in Edinburgh of the same era and building a darkly fantastical
narrative around the infamous Burke & Hare murders is Brian Ruckley’s The Edinburgh Dead (2011).
Once a soldier in the Napoleonic wars and bearing the scars
to prove it, Adam Quire is now a sergeant in the Edinburgh police force. A gruff, stubborn man, he has few friends in
the force, and spends most of his time alone on the beat, investigating crimes
in the district or trying to stop the rash of grave robberies that have broken
out in the city. When a body turns up in a dark alley, murdered savagely, Quire
starts to look into the matter, starting with the silver locket he found on the
body bearing the name of one John Ruthven.
At the man’s house, Ruthven is polite but cold. He thanks Quire for returning the locket but
is elusive in his answers to questions regarding the identity of the murdered man. Quire’s detective work turning up a business
connection to Ruthven, he has little time to investigate before being attacked one
night at his boarding house in the most bizarre fashion. The attack turning up evidence that even the
coroner cannot explain—the supposed expert on dead bodies at that, little does
Quire know that he has been sucked into the dark underbelly of Edinburgh’s
scientific research…
Tim Powers is known for his wonderfully written secret
histories. Taking real world events and
lightly mixing in elements of the fantastical to fill remaining gaps, I cannot help
feel very similarly Ruckley’s novel occupies a similar niche. Where Powers’ The Stress of Her Regard looks at a secret vampire society behind
the lives of some of Britain’s most famous poets, The Edinburgh Dead takes the natural sciences that were burgeoning
at the time in Britain—the discovery of galvanic electricity in the human body,
knowledge of the organs’ inner workings and interaction, etc.—and adds a touch
of research and discovery beyond factual science—knowledge and discovery
thought very likely for a hundred years after, even to this day among some
circles. The classic interepretation of
‘zombie’ never appearing in the novel, Ruckley tells a dark and gritty story
that sticks primarily to reality, but squeezes in a dash or two of the
supernatural to spice up the novel, resulting in a narrative part historical
fiction, and part gothic horror.
As a whole, The
Edinburgh Dead is a solid novel that asks to be read given the manner in
which Ruckley presents his material, which, at some fundamental level, is the
greatest compliment one can pay a book.
An inventive secret history that wraps itself around the Burke & Hare
murders of Scotland in the early 19th century with horror overtones, Ruckley’s
pacing nicely reveals the story as much as the atmosphere captures both the era
and type of tale being told, capping things off with a satisfying
conclusion. There are perhaps moments
where the prose could have been tightened up and maybe a little more could have
been done to give it a stronger period feel, but the overall approach works,
making for an entertaining read.
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