Mr Timothy by
Louis Bayard
hbk out September 04
Published by John Murray
at £12.99
This book follows the current trend to use historical characters from other
books as the lead in a crime novel. Sherlock Holmes, Canaletto and others
have now been joined by a Dickensian figure, as Mr Timothy is a grown-up
Tiny Tim from The Christmas Carol. Almost cured of his limp, Timothy
Cratchit no longer has his crutch and is living in relative affluence thanks to
his Uncle Ebenezer. However, for some reason, he lives in a brothel,
teaching the Madam to read and write and at night, helps an old sailor
dredge the Thames for corpses. Around Christmastime, he stumbles across
some young girls, some dead, some alive, who have a distinctive brand on
their arms and this leads him to discover a paedophile ring, supplying
children to well-heeled perverts. He is persecuted for his snooping and finds
that even the police are not to be trusted. His two assistants are Philomena,
one of the rescued girls, and a colourful character called Colin the Melodius,
an Artful Dodger-type lad from the London streets.
The plot is engaging, if rather distasteful in parts where it concerns child
sexual and physical abuse and torture to the point of murder, but it is the
style that makes the book unusual. It is written in a flowery, perhaps florid
way, often redolent with Dickensian imagery. Certainly the atmospheric
descriptions of Victorian London, with its dense fogs, its squalor and its
upper-class hypocrisy are beautifully portrayed, but it is an eccentric book,
with its long italicised monologues where Timothy talks with his dead
father. All the dialogue is not set within inverted commas as in
conventional writing, but just follows a hyphen, which is rather
disconcerting until the reader gets used to it.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
Mr Timothy by
Louis Bayard
