Tangled Web UK Review August 2008
Kill-Devil And Water (Pyke Mystery 3) by
Andrew Pepper
hbk out August 08
Published by Weidenfeld
at £12.99
This is another ‘Pyke’ mystery, Pyke being the singular name of a former Bow Street Runner, who came into money, then squandered the lot, so that in 1840, when this book starts, he is in a London debtor’s prison. He is released on the warrant of Fitzroy Tilling, the Deputy Commissioner of the newly-formed Metropolitan Police, because his expertise in detection is needed to investigate the murder of a mulatto woman in the East End. The rest of the new police force are tied up with the killing of a prominent aristocrat and Pyke is left to handle the case alone. The woman has been strangled and then had her eyes removed, though her identity is known as someone who recently arrived by ship for Jamaica.
Pyke, a widower with a young son, has odd personal circumstances, as his son is supported by an uncle who employs a nanny-housekeeper, to whom Pyke becomes attracted. The plot is convoluted and soon the detective has to go off to the West Indies to follow up ramifications there. He masquerades as a prospective purchaser of a declining sugar plantation, which become wrecked in a hurricane, then returns after several more deaths to London for the denouement.
This is a big book, the title being derived from the name of a powerful variety of native rum and needs much concentration to follow the twists and turns of the story-line, with quite a dash of suspension of disbelief, but the writing is excellent and the seedy atmosphere of Victorian London and the appalling conditions of life in the East End are well conveyed.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
Thousands of New and used Books at your Fingertips...
Support Tangled Web - Buy Your Books Online
