A gritty portrayal of a predator in the underbelly of Victorian London!
With no small amount of national pride, I'm thrilled to report that mere superlatives somehow seem insufficient to convey Gray's debut success with The Fiend in Human.
Edmund Whitty is a profligate, dissolute freelance journalist who has succumbed to every known Victorian vice save womanizing - snuff, cigarettes, gin, opium, laudanum, and Acker's Chlorodine (a potent mixture of opium, marijuana and cocaine in alcohol!) Despite having achieved a measure of journalistic fame and public notoriety by assigning the moniker "Chokee Bill" to William Ryan, currently awaiting execution for the strangulation and grisly mutilation of five ladies of questionable virtue, Whitty struggles with an ongoing desperate need to produce the income required to stave off gambling debtors who won't hesitate to use a physical beating to persuade payment. In the course of searching out new "crisp copy", lurid sensational pieces he can submit to his tight-fisted editor, he meets the impoverished Henry Owler, a "patterer" who wishes to render Ryan's last confession before his hanging into "true crime" verse. But Ryan (not unlike other convicted criminals, of course) protests he is innocent and circumstances begin to persuade Owler and Whitty that Ryan is indeed telling the truth. The signature white scarf killings have continued, swept under the carpet and hushed up by one and all - the police, the merchants, the petty criminals and even the poverty stricken residents of the local neighbourhood! Whitty in a desperate bid to achieve real fame in a fading, limpid journalistic career and financial freedom from the debtors who are relentlessly hounding him, decides to stake all on proving Ryan's innocence.
Gray has masterfully married the ascerbically witty, comic and always flowery Dickensian dialogue with Anne Perry's superb, elegant atmospheric descriptions of Victorian London life and then improved both by taking a step down into a much grittier, earthier representation of real characters living real lives. Two gentlemen Oxford swells pass wastrel days around gaming, sex and booze. The pain and wretched difficulties of daily life in a London slum are portrayed in exquisite, graphic detail that might warrant a warning to sensitive viewers were the medium television instead of a novel. Older female chaperones, quaintly termed "confidential friends", are employed to protect the nominal virtue of young ladies of marriageable age. The surviving local champion bare-knuckles boxer is portrayed as a friendly publican quite capable of acting as his own bouncer. Steet walkers and hookers are picked up by "gentleman" johns with a ritualized stylized dialogue and negotiation that, by today's standards, is absolutely hilarious.
You'll be treated, for example, to Gray's wonderful Dickensian variation on a simple theme that you and I would have written as simply "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder":
"For in truth there exists no young female (charwoman or countess, schoolgirl or flower-seller) in London who does not exist in some male mind as a tantalizing fantasy, in whose honour some schoolboy does not regularly engage in self-abuse - fantasy which, when he becomes an old boy, he will seek to make real. Hence, the relation between the brothel and the theatre: success in both depends upon one's observation of the world, of the human mind, as well as one's own outward identity in the calligraphy of sex."
The whodunit succeeds admirably with a couple of superb twists reserved until the final pages. In fact, the final twist, a brilliant piece of mis-direction by Gray, is held in reserve until the very last paragraph! On a somewhat deeper level, Gray manages, like Dickens, to also make probing critical comment on a number of issues without disrupting the flow of the story in the slightest. For example, his criticism of the ethics of journalists and the vested interest they have in creating news where none necessarily exists is quite apparent.
What a find! The Fiend in Human qualifies as perhaps the finest, most enjoyable read I've had the good luck to encounter over the last few years!
Gray's gifts as a dramatist are in evidence throughout this fine novel. The dialouge and period detail are marvelous. Strange that this ambitiuous entertainment didn't get the reviews lavished on Mr. Timothy which was fine but not as well-written.
A gritty portrayal of a predator in the underbelly of Victorian London!
With no small amount of national pride, I'm thrilled to report that mere superlatives somehow seem insufficient to convey Gray's debut success with The Fiend in Human.
Edmund Whitty is a profligate, dissolute freelance journalist who has succumbed to every known Victorian vice save womanizing - snuff, cigarettes, gin, opium, laudanum, and Acker's Chlorodine (a potent mixture of opium, marijuana and cocaine in alcohol!) Despite having achieved a measure of journalistic fame and public notoriety by assigning the moniker "Chokee Bill" to William Ryan, currently awaiting execution for the strangulation and grisly mutilation of five ladies of questionable virtue, Whitty struggles with an ongoing desperate need to produce the income required to stave off gambling debtors who won't hesitate to use a physical beating to persuade payment. In the course of searching out new "crisp copy", lurid sensational pieces he can submit to his tight-fisted editor, he meets the impoverished Henry Owler, a "patterer" who wishes to render Ryan's last confession before his hanging into "true crime" verse. But Ryan (not unlike other convicted criminals, of course) protests he is innocent and circumstances begin to persuade Owler and Whitty that Ryan is indeed telling the truth. The signature white scarf killings have continued, swept under the carpet and hushed up by one and all - the police, the merchants, the petty criminals and even the poverty stricken residents of the local neighbourhood! Whitty in a desperate bid to achieve real fame in a fading, limpid journalistic career and financial freedom from the debtors who are relentlessly hounding him, decides to stake all on proving Ryan's innocence.
Gray has masterfully married the ascerbically witty, comic and always flowery Dickensian dialogue with Anne Perry's superb, elegant atmospheric descriptions of Victorian London life and then improved both by taking a step down into a much grittier, earthier representation of real characters living real lives. Two gentlemen Oxford swells pass wastrel days around gaming, sex and booze. The pain and wretched difficulties of daily life in a London slum are portrayed in exquisite, graphic detail that might warrant a warning to sensitive viewers were the medium television instead of a novel. Older female chaperones, quaintly termed "confidential friends", are employed to protect the nominal virtue of young ladies of marriageable age. The surviving local champion bare-knuckles boxer is portrayed as a friendly publican quite capable of acting as his own bouncer. Steet walkers and hookers are picked up by "gentleman" johns with a ritualized stylized dialogue and negotiation that, by today's standards, is absolutely hilarious.
You'll be treated, for example, to Gray's wonderful Dickensian variation on a simple theme that you and I would have written as simply "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder":
"For in truth there exists no young female (charwoman or countess, schoolgirl or flower-seller) in London who does not exist in some male mind as a tantalizing fantasy, in whose honour some schoolboy does not regularly engage in self-abuse - fantasy which, when he becomes an old boy, he will seek to make real. Hence, the relation between the brothel and the theatre: success in both depends upon one's observation of the world, of the human mind, as well as one's own outward identity in the calligraphy of sex."
The whodunit succeeds admirably with a couple of superb twists reserved until the final pages. In fact, the final twist, a brilliant piece of mis-direction by Gray, is held in reserve until the very last paragraph! On a somewhat deeper level, Gray manages, like Dickens, to also make probing critical comment on a number of issues without disrupting the flow of the story in the slightest. For example, his criticism of the ethics of journalists and the vested interest they have in creating news where none necessarily exists is quite apparent.
What a find! The Fiend in Human qualifies as perhaps the finest, most enjoyable read I've had the good luck to encounter over the last few years!
What distinguishes The Fiend in Human from the myriad other Victorianthrillers?
1) The protagonist. Edmund Whitty is dissolute, insolvent, and hapless--yet aware of these shortcomings to comic yet poignant effect. He's also articulate, intelligent, intuitive, and despite an exterior of skepticism and degeneracy, a highly moral being. All of which makes him someone you want to spend as much time with as possible.
2) The writing. By combining the arch floridness of Victorian prose with a present-tense, subtly ironic style, Gray has created a distinctive voice.
3) The supporting characters. Not a cliche or stock character among them.
4) The humour. Yes, the story revolves around a Jack the Ripper type, but the book is damn funny nonetheless.
London, 1852: the world's capital city of crime; a city where murder and hangings are public entertainment, where reporters and balladeers vie with one another to be first to the next grisly, exclusive revelation. Among the panoply of killers awaiting execution is Chokee Bill, whose stranglings have set the capital abuzz. One of the balladeers, Henry Owler, is determined to extract a true confession from the killer. However, Chokee Bill claims he is innocent and that the real Fiend is still on the loose. Owler, enlists the help of one of London's leading investigative journalists, Edmund Whitty of the Falcon, to help him to discover the real murderer before he strikes again. But fate has some other twists in store. The killer is closer than either one expects, close enough to touch in the fog bound streets. Is he a wraith of the imagination? Or is he the nightmare the public have dreamed and now made all too real? Is he The Fiend in Human Form?
based on 10 reviews
