Well, Andrew Pepper has done it again. I read his first Captain Pyke book; The Last Days Of Newgate and was thoroughly rinsed dry by the time I had survived its gritty pre-Victorian Noir qualities and I enjoyed this one too. They are such compulsive page turners, filled with authentic feeling characters and horrors of another age. Although all the evils his characters flail against persist to plague us. His stories are a reminder that no matter how progressive we believe ourselves to be they are few new sins under the sun.
Queen Victoria has only been on the throne for three years by the time the events of this book take place. It feels too early to be calling this The Victorian Age, but what do I know.Captain Pyke is well down on his luck, in debtor's prison to begin with but soon released in order to solve the murder of a young mullatto woman. He once more finds himself plunged into a brutal horror-scape full of the most despicable characters. But Pyke is more than a match for the fiends who cross his path. Sometimes exhibiting violent tendancies that would mark him as undesirable against the two legged monsters he often finds himself in the hands off or on the trail off. For all that he also possesses an overwhelming sense of morality, one that causes him to slide along a razor's edge in the dity underbelly of London. Others may feel that life is cheap but he does not. No matter who's life that may be.
Sadly, for me that is, I missed the middle book in Andrew Pepper's series. I did not realise that until I started reading this book and found Captain Pyke in unfamiliar circumstances. By then it was too late to put the book aside as it was so bloody good.
