Page 76 - BBC History - September 2017

Boo
Books / Fictionks / Fiction

THREE MORE
GOTHIC NOVELS
SET IN THE 1800S

The Fiend in Human
John Maclachlan Gray (2002)

A killer awaits execu-
tion in a London jail,
but he insists on his
innocence and argues
that the real murderer
is still on the loose.
Only two men – a
balladeer peddling
doggerel verse about those hanged
at Newgate, and a newspaper crime
reporter with a taste for alcohol and
laudanum – believe him. In Gray’s
superbly convincing Victorian mys-
tery, they must scour the fog-bound
DM Mark’s novel follows the tribulations of a Canadian scholar searching streets of London to corner the true
for the bones of the apostle Simon the Zealot in the Lincolnshire countryside
fiend in human form.
FICTION Beloved Poison
ES Thomson (2016)
What lies beneath Jem Flockhart,
a woman passing as
NICK RENNISON enjoys a lurid tale of treasure hunting, a man in order to work
as an apothecary in
murder and mayhem set in 19th-century England a ramshackle London
hospital, stumbles
The Zealot’s Bones the city of Hull is being ravaged by across the coffins
DM Mark cholera. When the two men riskily of six babies hidden
Mulholland Books, 256 pages, £17.99 venture into its streets, they step into away in its old chapel. In her
what will become a nightmare for both attempts to discover the story
behind them, Jem ventures into
Diligence Matheson is a of them. Stone is looking for a prostitute
dangerous territory and threatens
rich Canadian, more who once seemed to offer him ambiva-
to unearth dark secrets from the
interested in biblical lent redemption from his troubles. He
hospital’s past. Terrible truths finally
archaeology than he is learns that she has been murdered by a emerge in ES Thomson’s vivid
in the family business. serial killer and vows to find the evocation of the seamier side of
At the end of a jaunt murderer and take his revenge. Victorian medicine.
around Europe, he Meanwhile, Matheson has fallen in
arrives in Lincolnshire with Ansell, an effete aristocrat whose The Vanishing
where he thinks a treasure might lie. collection of religious relics may offer Sophia Tobin (2017)
According to legend, Simon the Zealot, clues to the whereabouts of Simon’s
one of the more obscure of Christ’s bones. By accepting an invitation to stay Echoes of the Brontës
apostles, travelled to Britain and was at the country house owned by Ansell’s and their many
imitators abound in
martyred there. His bones, Matheson father, the Canadian unleashes a chain
this entertaining and
firmly believes, are buried somewhere in of macabre events.
atmospheric novel.
the Lincolnshire earth. The Canadian is Self-consciously lurid and often
Arriving to work as
determined to be the man who wins the violent, this is not a novel that will a housekeeper at
glory of discovering them. appeal to everyone. It is like a 21st- White Windows,
Accompanying him is Meshach century version of a Gothic novel or a wutheringly windswept house
Stone, a former British soldier, in flight of the ‘sensation’ novels by writers like on the Yorkshire Moors, heroine
from platoons of personal demons Wilkie Collins. Filled with murder, Annaleigh is soon introduced to the
which haunt him from his service in melodrama and madness, The Zealot’s brooding, Byronic anti-hero Marcus
India and Afghanistan. Stone acts as a Bones is an unsettling but thoroughly Twentyman. Her employer has a
fate worse than death in mind for
protector to the unworldly Matheson, gripping read.
her and only her own courage and
but they are about to face dangers for
ingenuity, and the love of a good
which even he is unprepared. The year is Nick Rennison is the author of Carver’s
man, can save her. ALAMY
1849 and, across the Humber estuary, Truth (Corvus, 2016)

76 BBC History Magazine