The Yard (Scotland Yard's Murder Squad, #1)
Ratings13
Average rating3.4
15
Ratings13
Average rating3.4
As Jack the Ripper’s reign of terror in London comes to an end, a new era of depravity sets the stage for the first gripping mystery featuring the detectives of Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad.
“If Charles Dickens isn’t somewhere clapping his hands for this one, Wilkie Collins surely is.”—The New York Times Book Review
Victorian London—a violent cesspool of squalid sin. The twelve detectives of Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad are expected to solve the thousands of crimes committed in the city each month. Formed after the Metropolitan Police’s spectacular failure in capturing Jack the Ripper, they suffer the brunt of public contempt. But no one can anticipate the brutal murder of one of their own...
A Scotland Yard Inspector has been found stuffed in a black steamer trunk at Euston Square Station, his eyes and mouth sewn shut. When Walter Day, the squad’s new hire, is assigned to the case, he finds a strange ally in Dr. Bernard Kingsley, the Yard’s first forensic pathologist. Their grim conclusion: this was not just a random, bizarre murder but in all probability, the first of twelve.
The squad itself it being targeted and the devious killer shows no signs of stopping. But Inspector Day has one more surprise, something even more shocking than the crimes: the murderer’s motive.
Reviews with the most likes.
I read the whole thing, because I was hoping to find another copper story that I could sink my teeth into, but I'm probably not going to pick up the next book anyway. There's not enough suspense, the protagonists are certainly no Sherlock Holmes, and I did not care about the crimes they solved, of which there were too many.
Enjoyable romp that dragged a little in parts. Slightly Mary-Sue lead characters. Occasionally lapsed into horrendous Americanisms that threw me out of the world. (Note for the author and editor- London doesn't really have blocks and it certainly does not have sidewalks. eeeuuurgh.)
Nice read but not really a mystery in the sense that we know pretty much right off the start who the killer is and why he's killing. This is more of an origin story of Scotland Yard in a post Jack The Ripper era, in fact that is exactly where the book starts: a year after the unsolved Ripper case has gone cold.
The thrust of the story is showing how the detectives & constables are essentially stumbling blind in this new era of serial killers or rather killers for which no pedestrian reason can found. So it is an origin story of how Detective Day & Sergeant Hammersmith come to be and that is quite fun however the rest of the story: the finding the killer is too expository & it seems that information is just given to us rather discovered and the character of Dr. Kingsley is just a font of info dumping.
However I can see how it's an introduction for a cast of characters (some more interesting than others) who will hopefully have more riveting adventures in future books.
