Book Review: London Crimes

Someone out there is murdering the living… and desecrating the dead.

Detective Jamie Brooke is a woman in the depths of despair. Her career is on the ropes. Her daughter is dying — there are only hours left before the end, and decisions have to be made.

Museum curator Blake Daniel is a man on the edge of destruction. Cursed with the ability to “read” objects — to see where they’ve come from, and the bloody histories they experience — Blake splits his time between working as a researcher at the British Museum… and binge-drinking to forget his nightmare visions.

Together, these two broken souls are all that stand between London and a serial killer. A young woman has been murdered, her uterus and unborn child removed during a gala event at a college of surgeons, any of whom could have committed the crime. The only clue is a small ivory figure of a woman undergoing a Cesarean section, dating to the seventeenth century.

Body modification, grave robbery, Nazi eugenics, a laboratory that specializes in extreme genetic experiments. All come together to create a mystery unlike any Jamie has experienced, and a danger greater than any Blake has ever seen in his visions.

It will take all Jamie’s detective skills, and all Blake’s psychic abilities, to find the killer.
To end the murders. To stop something that wants to destroy all that is good… and leave behind only DESECRATION.

Beyond darkness lies damnation. And beyond damnation… there is only delirium.

In a world gone mad, only the insane can rule.

Still reeling from the death of her beloved daughter, Detective Jamie Brooke needs time to grieve and to heal. What she gets is a call to murder and madness: a prominent psychiatrist has been tortured to death, and it’s up to her to uncover the people responsible, and stop them before they can kill again.

Turning to her friend, Blake Daniel — an antiquities expert cursed with the psychic ability to “see” the bloody histories of objects — Jamie begins an investigation that will take her to the most infamous asylum in history, and a place where insanity is born. A place where rules don’t apply, and where madness is the only law.

She has no idea what she’s getting into. Because Jamie doesn’t know the true history of Bedlam Asylum, the depraved experiments that went on there, or how it leads to the string of murders that could bring the country to its knees.

Worst of all, she doesn’t know about Blake’s connection to Bedlam, to the murders, and to the people willing to execute anyone who stands in their way. And Blake himself doesn’t know the full evil of his own past, or that his gift has put him in the sights of a group who want to use him as a guinea pig for their darkest experiments.

The answers are coming. But some answers bring only pain. Some answers bring only death.

And the worst answers of all bring only DELIRIUM.

Who is the sinner and who is the saint?

Jamie Brooke is working as a private investigator in the London Borough of Southwark when the body of a priest is found in the ruins of Winchester Palace, his tattooed arms flayed, his mouth stuffed with feathers.

Jamie begins the hunt for the skin collector with the help of museum researcher, Blake Daniel, who is haunted by visions of a terrifying past.

As violence erupts, leaving a trail of bodies in its wake, Jamie and Blake must find the murderer before those they love are taken down in the chaos.

A psychological thriller with an edge of the supernatural, Deviance is the story of a struggle for power and a fight for freedom against the backdrop of modern-day London.

A dark thriller full of the evil side of medical history and the modern-day nutcases who still want to cut into the living, un-anaesthetised flesh to find the secrets of the body.

Body snatching, grave-robbing, abduction, and experimenting on people on the fringes of society is just the tip of the iceberg. Looking into corpses turned into art for various purposes, the legality of doing so, and where the ethical and moral lines should be between furthering scientific inquiry and feeding macabre curiosity, is explored in this novel.

Jamie starts out just doing her job: and then it gets personal when it involves her daughter. Great characterisation and motive.

With all the blood, gore, and gross body parts in jars, what actually bothered me was the animal abuse… Go figure.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book with its medical history, macabre secret society, bit of the paranormal, loads of heartache, and the kick-ass female detective who survives it all and vows to live.

I enjoyed the history of mental illness and how it was viewed and treated through time and how it is perceived today. An excellent theme, not just the main storyline, of how people treat the Other.

I do think the vigilante (or murderer, if you prefer) could have gone after bigger fish, like the main psycho experimenting on the mentally different.

I can’t wait to see what Jamie does next. A dark thriller with interesting themes and questions about morality.

An interesting premise, but without the historical detail and emotional punch of the previous books.

The Masquerade Ball and all it entailed was the best part of the book. The end, with all the climbing, reminded me a bit of the film “Annie” where she climbed the train rails pursued by Tim Curry – all the fear included.

A bit more about Blake and his job and how the current museum exhibition correlated with where Jamie now lived and worked and what that loon Cameron wanted would have added a bit more colour. There was room to mirror Jack the Ripper and the modern-day skin stealer along with others who persecuted prostitutes and those with tattoos; could have added that zing of secret societies and sanctioned torture the previous books had. I think it goes back to my initial assessment.

Still, a thrilling tale. I’d like to know more about Blake’s family…